President Obama presents the Medal of Freedom to retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, August 12, 2009. (Getty Images)

Tutu: ‘I’d rather choose hell than a homophobic heaven’

By Barry Duke • 10 years ago

Jul
2013

VETERAN South African gay rights champion, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 82, yesterday said that, if he had the choice, he’d rather go to hell that to a homophobic heaven.

President Obama presents the Medal of Freedom to retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, August 12, 2009. (Getty Images)

In denouncing religions that discriminate against gays, Tutu said:

I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this. I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place.

He made the remarks during the United Nations‘ launch of its gay-rights campaign in Cape Town.

Tutu also likened equal rights for gays to the fight for equal rights for blacks.

I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about apartheid. For me, it is at the same level.

The Author

Barry Duke

Veteran journalist Barry Duke, born in South Africa in 1947, settled in the UK in 1973, where he became actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement and gay rights organisations. A militant atheist, he joined the National Secular Society (NSS) and was a co-founder in 1979 of the Gay Humanist Group which changed its name to the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association in 1987. In 2017 he was handed a Lifetime Achievement award by the NSS for his "spirited opposition to religious intolerance and irrationality" in his roles as a free speech advocate and his work as editor of the Freethinker and the Pink Triangle Trust website. In 2022, when the Freethinker suddenly went "woke", he was summarily sacked for being too aggressively atheistic. In 2017 he was married to his partner of 25 years, Marcus Robinson, in Gibraltar. The couple live in Benidorm, Spain.