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Desmond Tutu’s daughter’s licence stripped following gay marriage

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The daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Reverend Canon Mpho Tutu-van Furth has been stripped off her licence and can no longer preside at Holy Communion, weddings, baptisms or funerals as a result of her gay marriage.

The decision was reached because the church does not recognise gay marriage following Reverend Furth’s recent union with her female lover in a country where same-sex marriage was legalised in 2006.

According to Reverend Mpho, her father, the retired archbishop and celebrated anti-apartheid campaigner who has previously spoken out in favour of gay marriage, was “sad but not surprised” at the news. “The canon (law) of the South African Church states that marriage is between one man and one woman,” Reverend Mpho said in an email.

Continuing, Reverend Mpho who honeymooned with her lover Marceline Furth, on the Indonesian island of Bali after holding a wedding party outside Cape Town earlier this month said; “After my marriage… the Bishop of Saldanha Bay was advised that he must revoke my licence. I offered to return my licence rather than require that he take it from me.”

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The couple — who are both divorced and have children — officially tied the knot in the Netherlands in December.

“My wife and I meet across almost every dimension of difference. Some of our differences are obvious; she is tall and white, I am black and vertically challenged,” Mpho told the South African City Press newspaper.

Mpho’s lover Marceline Tutu-van Furth is an Amsterdam-based professor specialising in paediatric infections.

“Ironically, coming from a past where difference was the instrument of division, it is our sameness that is now the cause of distress,” Mpho said in a reference to apartheid.

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0 Comments

  1. 3ice

    May 25, 2016 at 6:11 am

    Fair enough for all parties involved. I admire Mpho’s cool response to everything, and I admire the stand of both parties for what they believe in.

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