Tutu Blasts Anglicans Over Gay Feud

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Sunday blasted the Anglican church for being "obsessed" with homosexuality. The denomination has been deeply divided since the election of Gene Robinson in 2003 to be Bishop of New Hampshire. Robinson is the first openly gay man to be made a bishop in the Anglican faith.

Since then, Tutu told the BBC, the Church has become "extraordinarily homophobic".

Tutu slammed the worldwide leader of the church and Anglican conservatives in a BBC radio program to be broadcast Tuesday. Tutu accused Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams of failing to follow a "welcoming God" and said he was ashamed of what the Anglican Church has become.

"Our world is facing problems - poverty, HIV and Aids - a devastating pandemic, and conflict," Tutu told the broadcaster. "God must be weeping looking at some of the atrocities that we commit against one another." In the face of all of that, our Church, especially the Anglican Church, at this time is almost obsessed with questions of human sexuality," he said. Tutu also chastised Church conservatives who say that homosexuality is a choice and gays and lesbians need to repent." It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual," the Nobel laureate said. "You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race infected society."