‘Coming out’ is testimony

Harvey Gillman reflects on Quakers, sexuality and equality

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.

Shortly after the massacre, remarks by some extreme Christian pastors celebrated the deaths. A fortnight after the shooting a man who, in the name of Jewish orthodoxy, had gone to a Pride event in 2015 in Jerusalem and stabbed six participants, was sentenced to life imprisonment. I am mindful, also, that one Friend/attender has attacked me and several other Friends online because we are gay/lesbian.

So, I had no right to think that because in Britain there are a number of cities and towns where equality seems to be on the march that all is well in this concern and we can get back to real issues like world peace and sustainability. Life is sacred, in the general and in the particular. The details of everyday and all people are where we testify to the divine within the human; so I accepted the invitation to speak.

For me ‘coming out’ is testimony. Testimony is not a creed. It is not a doctrine. The question is not whether we believe in the peace testimony or the testimony to equality or not, as if they were formulae written down by glorious ancestors. It is rather how we live in the here and now. As I spoke to Friends on this theme I realised how angry I was at the cruelty of religious systems that have claimed to know the divine will and carry out his (and it usually is a he) punitive laws – both sad and angry at how women have been treated at the hands of male hierarchies, same sex partners have been excluded from the funerals of their loved ones, how families have taken over shared property and expelled loving partners, how parents have rejected their children (and vice versa). Some will say, and have done so, that Quakers should not get angry, but in some way, my anger is part of my testimony, if I can use it creatively and, paradoxically, in love.

Until the twentieth century not much was actually written in Quaker circles about equality, except perhaps in terms of male/female worth in the religious life. The emphasis was on answering that of God in all, though distinctions were made between the roles of women and men, and certainly the equality of African-American slaves was a hotly disputed issue for Friends – even for those who believed in emancipation. Respect due to people who are gay, lesbians, trans and so forth is still absent in many Quaker Yearly Meetings around the world. So, even Friends, in the vanguard of social reform that we are, still have much to do.

In the Church Times of 12 August there was a fascinating article by Adrian Thatcher of Exeter University called ‘Redeem a truly Christian approach to gender’. He quotes Paul of Tarsus in Galatians: ‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female’. The verse actually continues: ‘for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’

Some Friends might bridle at a mention of Paul in the context of sexuality and others at the centrality of Christ Jesus. Much ancient Hebrew thinking emphasised difference and exclusion (especially Leviticus). What Adrian Thatcher finds redeeming on the other hand is that these binary distinctions mentioned by Paul are ultimately irrelevant in what the author of the article calls ‘the new realm of love, justice and peace’.

That of God within, though expressed in many different ways, is in itself beyond distinction. It is, in the words of Jesus, the very source of life in abundance. How is it then that for so many people the religious life stands for negativity and fear of life itself?

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