wfn.org | SOUTH AFRICA: PRIEST SPEAKS OUT ON HOMOSEXUALITY

[a.whitefield@quest.org.uk]

Title;SOUTH AFRICA: PRIEST SPEAKS OUT ON HOMOSEXUALITY
July 1, 1997
ANGLICAN COMMUNION NEWS SERVICE
Canon Jim Rosenthal,Director of Communications
Anglican Communion Office
London, England

[97.6.4.4]

SOUTH AFRICA: PRIEST SPEAKS OUT ON HOMOSEXUALITY

(Noel Bruyns, ENI)  Churches should accept the "reality of
homosexuality" and promote frankness as it cannot be wished away,
according to the chairman of the South African Human Rights Commission
(SAHRC), Dr Barney Pityana.

Dr Pityana is an Anglican priest as well as a lawyer and former director
of the Programme to Combat Racism of the World Council of Churches in
Geneva.

"It is important to affirm the humanity of others and recognise the full
expression of that humanity," Dr Pityana said in a statement released in
Johannesburg on 18 June. "The reality of a gay Christian being loved and
accepted would impact on and confront the Church's own teaching and
challenge the prevailing prejudices." Christians should not decide who
belonged to God and who did not, and should not deny what He had
created.

Dr Pityana made his remarks after the Human Rights Commission received a
complaint from a homosexual group when the Pretoria City Council refused
permission for them to place an advertisement on a municipal bus stating
"Gay is okay".

Speaking at a book launch early this month, Dr Pityana also said: "There
can be no Church without the difference and diversity that is provided
by God as riches in race and gender and ethnicity; in male and female,
in diversities of sexual orientation, in black, white and others. All
belong to the same family of Creation whom God loves dearly ... The
challenge then is to recognise that there is no homosexual problem but
that there is a challenge to dialogue ... Dialogue means that we must
always be open to God's surprises and that there are no closed
possibilities to the grace of God. If we take God seriously, I believe
we shall have the key to unlock the future."