Every South African has the right to be different, Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke told a South African Council of Churches (SACC) seminar on same-sex marriages in Kempton Park on Monday.
”It is clear; it comes from the Constitution. Everyone has the right to have a flat nose, to have curly hair, or to have straight hair. That’s beyond debate.
”Everyone has the right to have red eyes, blue eyes or brown eyes … Everyone has a right to be different, particularly if the distinguishing features are immutable,” he said.
South Africa’s Constitution recognises many family formations, including those that ”don’t look ideal”.
”The diversity [of South Africa] does not end with the nice things that we like; it actually extends to the way we relate to each other sexually.
”None of those people who find themselves in the family formations that are ever evolving, and are changing in our society, ought to be penalised purely because they are from families that don’t look ideal.
”We have since moved on from that intolerance and would like to see a society where we accept that a lot is … changing all the time. At the same time, the new formations ought to advance the values of our democratic society,” he said.
The SACC is expected to use the seminar’s two days of deliberations to formulate a position on same-sex marriages for presentation to Parliament later this year.
Moseneke, who said he was initially reluctant to attend the conference, emphasised that he was not there to defend the Constitutional Court’s ruling last year in favour of same-sex unions, but rather to participate in the countrywide debate on the issue.
The views he expressed were not his own, but represented the official standpoint of the judiciary, he said.
Other speakers at the seminar include the Roman Catholic Church’s Cardinal Wilfred Napier, SACC president Professor Russel Botman, the Methodist Church’s presiding bishop, Ivan Abrahams, and gay Anglican priest Father Douglas Torr.
SACC general secretary Dr Molefe Tsele has voiced confidence that the seminar would help break stereotypes about gay people and human sexuality.
”As the church, we think it is a right thing that we have organised this seminar in order to get the people talking. They are important issues for both theological and constitutional understanding and we believe they will clear many issues about human sexuality,” he said.
The SACC expected gay activists, gender activists, legal scholars, theologians and ordinary church people to participate in the second day of the seminar at the Kempton Park Conference Centre in Bonaero Park on Tuesday. — Sapa