Brad Pitt and Desmond
Tutu Speak Up for Gay Rights
09 July 2007-
In an interview for Vanity Fair, actor Brad Pitt gets into the issue of gay
rights and discrimination in relation to Christianity with South Africa's
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.
Brad Pitt: "So certainly discrimination has no place in Christianity. There's a
big argument going on in America right now, on gay rights and equality."
Desmond Tutu: "For me, I
couldn't ever keep quiet. I came from a situation where for a very long time
people were discriminated against, made to suffer for something about which they
could do nothing their ethnicity. We were made to suffer because we were not
white. Then, for a very long time in our church, we didn't ordain women, and we
were penalizing a huge section of humanity for something about which they could
do nothing their gender. And I'm glad that now the church has changed all that.
I'm glad that apartheid has
ended. I could not for any part of me be able to keep quiet, because people were
being penalized, ostracized, treated as if they were less than human, because of
something they could do nothing to change their sexual orientation. For me, I
can't imagine the Lord that I worship, this Jesus Christ, actually concurring
with the persecution of a minority that is already being persecuted.
The Jesus who I worship is a
Jesus who was forever on the side of those who were being clobbered, and he got
into trouble precisely because of that. Our church, the Anglican Church, is
experiencing a very, very serious crisis. It is all to do with human sexuality.
I think God is weeping. He is weeping that we should be spending so much energy,
time, resources on this subject at a time when the world is aching."
Brad Pitt: "I couldn't agree with you more. Thank you for saying that."
Vanity Fair dedicates its entire July issue to Africa with 20 different covers,
all shot by world-renowned lesbian photographer Annie Leibowitz, featuring
celebrities like Bono, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Madonna, Brad Pitt, George
Clooney, and many others.
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