Committed relationships

Experience changes attitudes, discovered Phil Lucas

by Phil Lucas 1st October 2009

The decision of British Quakers, taken at the end of July, to treat same-sex marriages in the same way as different-sex marriages is the culmination of a long process. Towards a Quaker View of Sex, published in 1963, stated: ‘An act which expresses true affection between two individuals and gives pleasure to them both, does not seem to us to be sinful by reason alone of the fact that it is homosexual’. Twenty-two years later, we considered a proposal that it was time for us to treat equally same-sex and different-sex relationships. We were not then ready but when a similar proposal came back nearly three years ago it started a process that led to our discovering the certainty that this is now God’s will for us.