Churches should accept the "reality of homosexuality" and promote frankness as it cannot be wished away, according to the chairman of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), Dr Barney Pityana.

Dr Pityana is an Anglican priest as well as a lawyer and former director of the Programme to Combat Racism of the World Council of Churches in Geneva.

"It is important to affirm the humanity of others and recognise the full expression of that humanity," Dr Pityana said in a statement released in Johannesburg on 18 June. "The reality of a gay Christian being loved and accepted would impact on and confront the Church's own teaching and challenge the prevailing prejudices." Christians should not decide who belonged to God and who did not, and should not deny what He had created.

Dr Pityana made his remarks after the Human Rights Commission received a complaint from a homosexual group when the Pretoria City Council refused permission for them to place an advertisement on a municipal bus stating "Gay is okay".

Speaking at a book launch early this month, Dr Pityana also said: "There can be no Church without the difference and diversity that is provided by God as riches in race and gender and ethnicity; in male and female, in diversities of sexual orientation, in black, white and others. All belong to the same family of Creation whom God loves dearly ... The challenge then is to recognise that there is no homosexual problem but that there is a challenge to dialogue ... Dialogue means that we must always be open to God's surprises and that there are no closed possibilities to the grace of God. If we take God seriously, I believe we shall have the key to unlock the future."

Article by: Noel Bruyns, ENI