QUAKERS BACK GAY MARRIAGE

Quakers are backing gay marriage

Sunday July 11,2010
By Pete Maclaine

QUAKERS are calling for gay people to be allowed the same marital status as their heterosexual counterparts.

The Religious Society of Friends last year sanctioned the proposal of same-sex marriages after backing gay “unions” for two decades.

They are calling for a meeting with Home Secretary Theresa May to bring pressure in Parliament.

The Government, meanwhile, has refused to extend the term “marriage” to same-sex couples, although it has recognised “civil partnerships” which give homosexual couples almost exactly the same rights of inheritance, pensions and property as heterosexuals.

At their gathering in York in 2009, more than 1,500 Quakers agreed to “treat same-sex, committed relationships in the same way as opposite-sex marriages, reaffirming our central insight that marriage is the Lord’s work and we are but witnesses”.

The latest edition of the manual Quaker Faith and Practice is to be changed so that “same-sex marriages can be prepared, celebrated, witnessed, recorded and reported to the State as opposite-sex marriages are”.

Quakers have agreed not to break the law by taking part in same-sex marriages until they are legally recognised.

The gathering approved the statement: “We will not at this time require our registering officers to act contrary to the law but understand that the law does not preclude them from playing a central role in the celebration and recording of same-sex marriages.”

Although other Christian churches and other religions have approved blessings for same-sex civil partnerships, the Quakers are the UK’s first mainstream religious group to approve marriages for lesbians and gays.

Gay and lesbian people last week received an apology from the Prime Minister.