[Ecumenical News International] During an address to the Church of Scotland General Assembly in Edinburgh, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that homosexuals have a place in the church.
Decisions made during the general assembly of the Kirk, as the Presbyterian Church of Scotland is known, have left the denomination deeply divided on the issue of gay clergy.
Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the retired primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, received a standing ovation.
"I would find it impossible to stand by when people are being persecuted for something about which they can do nothing -- their sexual orientation," Tutu told delegates on the last day of their 2009 meeting. "In this family there are no outsiders. All are insiders -- lesbian, gay, so-called straight -- we are family."
Tutu's May 27 speech was the day after a decision by the Kirk to impose a two-year ban on open debate about the ordination of non-celibate gay people after the Kirk announced the appointment of a commission to investigate the issue and to report back by 2011.
Read the rest at Episcopal Life Online
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