AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- The Anglican Bishop of Auckland is being taken to the Human Rights Tribunal over allegations he is discriminating against a gay man who wants to become a priest.

Right Reverend Ross Bay has been accused of preventing a gay man entering the Anglican Church's training or discernment program for priests because he is unmarried and in a sexual relationship with his male partner.

Bay denies the allegation.

Yona Okoth (pictured below) was the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda from 1984 to 1995. He described himself as “ just a man from the jungle” and rose from obscurity to head the 10 million member Church of Uganda representing a third of his country’s population.

I met him in 1991 when he asked for help to combat the spread of AIDS. He had an “AIDS conversion experience” in 1988 after he dramatically spoke at the Lambeth Conference of worldwide Anglican bishops.

Back in 2008, Jon Qwelane posted a piece in his column in the Sunday Sun. Well known to the South African LGBTQI community is the fact that Jon Qwelane, despite protest and outrage, was sent to Uganda as South Africa’s Ambassador to that country.

Qwelane, inter alia, writes about the Anglican Church’s internal rift over the ordination of gay priests, stating that the “real problem” is the “rapid degradation of values and traditions…;” and much worse draws the much abused analogy between homosexuality and bestiality.