page_title: Desmond Tutu
section_title: Social and international issues: 1999–2009
hierarchical_section_title: Desmond Tutu / Later life / Social and international issues: 1999–2009
caption_attribution_description: The 14th Dalai Lama with Desmond Tutu in 2004.
context_page_description: Desmond Mpilo Tutu OMSG CH GCStJ is a South African Anglican cleric and theologian known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was the Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then the Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first black African to hold the position. Theologically, he sought to fuse ideas from black theology with African theology.
  Tutu was born of mixed Xhosa and Motswana heritage to a poor family in Klerksdorp, Union of South Africa. Entering adulthood, he trained as a teacher and married Nomalizo Leah Tutu, with whom he had several children. In 1960, he was ordained as an Anglican priest and in 1962 moved to the United Kingdom to study theology at King's College London. In 1966 he returned to southern Africa, teaching at the Federal Theological Seminary and then the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. In 1972, he became the Theological Education Fund's director for Africa, a position based in London but necessitating regular tours of the African continent.
context_section_description: Post-apartheid, Tutu's status as a gay rights activist kept him in the public eye more than any other issue facing the Anglican Church. Tutu regarded discrimination against homosexuals as being the equivalent to discrimination against black people and women, and his views on this known through speeches and sermons. After the 1998 Lambeth Conference of bishops reaffirmed the church's opposition to same-sex sexual acts, Tutu wrote to George Carey stating "I am ashamed to be an Anglican". He regarded the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams as too accommodating of conservatives who wanted to eject various US and Canadian Anglican churches from the Anglican Communion after they expressed a pro-LGB rights stance. Tutu expressed the view that if these conservatives disliked the inclusiveness of the Anglican Communion, they always had "the freedom to leave". In 2007, Tutu accused the church of being obsessed with homosexuality and declared: "If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God." In 2011, he called on the Anglican Church of Southern Africa to accept and conduct same-sex marriages.
  Tutu also spoke out on the need to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic, in June 2003 stating that "Apartheid tried to destroy our people and apartheid failed. If we don't act against HIV-AIDS, it may succeed, for it is already decimating our population". On the April 2005 election of Pope Benedict XVI—who was known for his conservative views on issues of gender and sexuality—Tutu described it as unfortunate that the Roman Catholic Church was now unlikely to change its opposition to the use of condoms "amidst the fight against HIV/AIDS" nor its opposition to the ordination of women priests. To help combat child trafficking, in 2006 Tutu launched a global campaign, organised by the aid organisation Plan, to ensure that all children are registered at birth.
  Tutu retained his interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and after the signing of the Oslo Accords was invited to Tel Aviv to attend the Peres Centre for Peace. He became increasingly frustrated following the collapse of the 2000 Camp David Summit, and in 2002 gave a widely publicised speech denouncing Israeli policy regarding the Palestinians and calling for sanctions against Israel. Comparing the Israeli-Palestinian situation with that in South Africa, he said that "one reason we succeeded in South Africa that is missing in the Middle East is quality of leadership - leaders willing to make unpopular compromises, to go against their own constituencies, because they have the wisdom to see that would ultimately make peace possible." Tutu was named to head a United Nations fact-finding mission to Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip to investigate the November 2006 incident in which soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces killed 19 civilians. Israeli officials expressed concern that the report would be biased against Israel. Tutu cancelled the trip in mid-December, saying that Israel had refused to grant him the necessary travel clearance after more than a week of discussions.
  In 2003, Tutu was the scholar in residence at the University of North Florida. It was there, in February, that he broke his normal rule on not joining protests outside South Africa by taking part in a New York demonstration against plans for the U.S. to launch the Iraq War. He telephoned Condoleezza Rice urging the U.S. government not to go to war without a resolution from the United Nations Security Council. Tutu questioned why Iraq was being singled out for allegedly possessing weapons of mass destruction when Europe, India, and Pakistan also had many such devices. In 2004, he appeared in Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, an Off Broadway play in New York City critical of the U.S. detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. In January 2005, he added his voice to the growing dissent over terrorist suspects held at Guantánamo's Camp X-Ray, stating that these detentions without trial were "utterly unacceptable" and comparable to the apartheid-era detentions. He also criticised the UK's introduction of measures to d
caption: The 14th Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates, in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2004
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