Anglican preacher undeterred by anti-gay hostility

DAR ES SALAAM, Feb 17 (Reuters) Davis Mac-Iyalla, Nigerian gay activist and Anglican lay preacher, has faced death threats, condemnation from church leaders and a push by his parliament to criminalise homosexuality.

However, the 35-year-old has kept the faith, even when someone threatened to attack him with acid in a letter delivered anonymously by hand.

''It weakens me and puts fear in me, but yet it still has not stopped me,'' he told Reuters in an interview.

Initially, Mac-Iyalla's diocese in the Niger Delta wanted to turn him away when he declared his sexual orientation in 2005, but relented.

''When the Church in which you are born wants to disclaim you, there's no one who will be happy to get such news,'' he said on the sidelines of a summit of leading Anglican clerics this week called to try to avert schism in the world's third-biggest Christian denomination over gay clergy and same-sex unions.

Led by Archbishop Peter Akinola, Nigeria's Anglican Church is in the forefront of a conservative faction of the world's 77 million Anglicans, which strongly opposes gay rights.

Akinola has denounced homosexuality as ''an aberration unknown even in animal relationships'', and supports a Nigerian bill that would outlaw gays and lesbians and ban Church officials from associating with them.

''That Nigerian bill is a bill of hypocrisy. The truth about Nigeria is people know who the gays and lesbians are in their neighbourhoods. Parents know their children,'' Mac-Iyalla said.

''It doesn't matter because you don't have sex on the streets.

The problem is when you try to have a voice and you begin to talk about your rights.'' SHIFTING INFLUENCE Akinola was one of seven archbishops who refused to take communion with the leader of the liberal US Episcopal Church yesterday, in protest at her support for the consecration of a gay American bishop in 2003.

Mac-Iyalla said Akinola's hardline stance had more to do with the struggle for influence in the Anglican Communion, where the small but financially powerful US branch is pitted against the churches of the poorer developing world where congregations are growing.

With 17.5 million members, the second biggest after the Church of England, the Nigerian Anglican Church has enjoyed growing influence but still faces competition for followers from Islam, which also takes a harsh view of homosexuality.

''I can't judge if it is his (Akinola's) faith, but from experiences I've had, I think it is more political than theological.

It has to do with power,'' Mac-Iyalla said.

''Those who want to split the church, those who want power, those who want a supplementary church look for an agenda and sexuality is what is selling well.'' Mac-Iyalla said that, despite their differences, he met Akinola briefly, shaking his hand and exchanging a few words at the hotel overlooking the palm-fringed Indian Ocean where the primates are meeting.

''My meeting will create safe room for me to meet him back home,'' Mac-Iyalla said optimistically.

REUTERS SP PM1657