Desmond Tutu’s Daughter Forced To Leave Clergy After Marrying A Woman

“The canon [law] of the South African church states that marriage is between one man and one woman."

From:NewNowNext

 Mpho Tutu-van Furth, daughter of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and famous Christian leader Desmond Tutu, gave up her right to officiate as a priest in South Africa after marrying another woman.

“The canon [law] of the South African church states that marriage is between one man and one woman,” she said in a statement. She added that the South African bishop who had given her permission to officiate in his diocese was “advised” by Church officials to “revoke” her license.

Instead of requiring him to take her license, she offered to return it, stating that she was “still a priest in good standing” at her home church in the United States, where she was first ordained in 2003.

Though South Africa legalized same-sex marriage in 2006, the Anglican Church of which Tutu-van Furth is a member is still deeply divided on the issue of marriage equality and is only now beginning discussions about the inclusion of LGBT bishops in the Church

 Tutu-van Furth married Marceline van Furth, a Dutch academic, in a civil wedding in the Netherlands this past December. Desmond Tutu, a longtime advocate of LGBT rights, gave his “father’s blessing” to the union.

Of their relationship, Tutu-van Furth told City Press that she and her “wife…meet across almost every dimension of difference. Some of our differences are obvious; she is tall and white, I am black and vertically challenged.”

“Ironically,” she continued “coming from a past where difference was the instrument of division, it is our sameness that is now the cause of distress. My wife and I are both women.”

Not all in the South African church support the decision to remove Tutu-van Furth from her duties. Cape Town bishop Raphael Hess said he was “vexed” by the decision to strip Tutu-van Furth of her license.

“The time has come for us to exercise pastoral care, for us to demonstrate a shift that is reflected in the law,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “At the moment she cannot [minister] and she has accepted that but we are hoping that there might be a window for us to change it.”