Among the worldwide tributes to the late Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Desmond Tutu come the recollections of the Right Rev. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the United States’ first gay Episcopal bishop. Tutu, Robinson recalls, came to his defense when the church excluded Robinson from a global gathering because Robinson was gay.
“It was quite surreal because I was taking grief from literally around the world,” Robinson told NBC. “There was probably at that time, and maybe still, no one better known around the world than Desmond Tutu. It was an astounding gesture of generosity and kindness.”
Reports Bostons NBC-TV 10:
Tutu, South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist for racial justice, died at age 90. He was an uncompromising foe of apartheid, South Africa’s brutal regime of oppression against its Black majority, as well as a leading advocate for LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage.
“Now, with gay marriage, it’s hard to remember how controversial this was, and for him to stand with me at the very time I was being excluded … it completely floored me,” said Robinson.
In the forward to Robinson’s book, Tutu also apologized for the “cruelty and injustice” the LGBTQ community had suffered at the hands of fellow Anglicans.
Tutu, Robinson said, used his own experience of oppression to understand and empathize with others.
“He used that as a window into what it was like to be a woman, what it was like to be someone in a wheelchair or for someone to LGBTQ or whatever it was,” he said. “It was the thing that taught him to be compassionate.”
Read the complete NBC-TV 10 article here.
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