Meeting for Sufferings: Quakers to stop offering civil partnerships

Same sex Quaker weddings will be registered as religious marriages

Same sex Quaker weddings will, henceforth, be registered as religious marriages and no civil partnership option will be offered, it was decided at Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) on Saturday 5 April.  In 2012 MfS accepted the registration of religious premises for civil partnerships as a first step towards a change in legislation to allow same sex marriage.

With the introduction of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 in England and Wales, where the first weddings took place on 29 March, and the passing of the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2014 in Scotland, where the first weddings are expected in the autumn, religious marriage between same sex couples is now legal in much of the UK.

Paul Parker, recording clerk, spoke to a paper written by the Church Government Advisory Group posing the question: ‘Should Britain Yearly Meeting continue to offer civil partnership registration to same sex couples following their Quaker wedding?’

One Friend stated that ‘our position is clear’. He went on to say that, as civil partnerships were accepted as a halfway stage that was ‘the nearest we could get’, it was time to abandon them except where it is still the best that is available. The Meeting showed overwhelming support for this statement with a resounding chorus of ‘that Friend speaks my mind’.

Friends minuted that: ‘We unite with the recommendation of our Church Government Advisory Group that Quaker marriages should be registered with the state as marriages wherever this is possible, and that we should cease to register civil partnerships in association with Quaker marriages.’

The only exceptions to this will be in places ‘where a same sex marriage may not be reported to the relevant civil authorities, such as in the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.’

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