‘Coming out’ is testimony

Harvey Gillman reflects on Quakers, sexuality and equality

‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female’ | Photo: Kim Seng / flickr CC.

I was recently asked by Friends in Somerset to speak on the theme of Quakers, sexuality and the need for equality. My first reaction was to refuse. It was as if I had to prove that the Earth was not flat or that evolution did not contradict the idea of the sacredness of life. Surely, we had gone beyond those old arguments. But then came the massacre at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where sexual repression, sanctioned yet again by religious bigotry, led to the deaths of many people because of their sexual orientation.

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