We are but witnesses
Thelma Holt writes about a fiftieth anniversary event at Yealand Meeting
Michael Booth, church government adviser for Britain Yearly Meeting, joined Yealand Friends in Lancashire in their celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act 1967 on Tuesday 26 September 2017. The event was organised in grateful acknowledgement of the contribution homosexual Friends, both as individuals and couples, make to our Meetings.
He told of changes in legislation since 1967, interlacing his account with events in the Quaker community. Change was sporadic and turbulent at first, reflecting the changes in attitude within society generally. The 1967 Act decriminalised homosexual acts occurring in private between two men both having attained the age of twenty-one. Previously, such acts invoked a prison sentence.
The Wolfenden Report, reflecting concern about the increasing number of prosecutions of homosexuals, had recommended decriminalisation as early as 1957. That year saw the beginning of an unofficial study group, the Quaker Group on Homosexuality and Other Problems of Sex. Their deliberations resulted, in 1963, in the publication of their forward thinking report, Towards A Quaker View of Sex.
Some time elapsed after 1967 before further legal developments took place, but in 1988 Meeting for Sufferings, then our national executive body, suggested that individual Meetings might recognise and celebrate same sex relationships.
Initially the aim of many seeking legal amendments had been to achieve parity with lesbians and heterosexuals regarding age of consent, but in 1994 an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill to make the age of consent sixteen years was rejected. The rejection crossed party lines but a reduction to eighteen years was agreed upon. Further attempts at parity followed but were rejected by the House of Lords. In the Sexual Offences Act 2003 most of the 1967 provision was repealed in order to consolidate sexual offences legislation and maintain decriminalisation.
In 2004 the Civil Partnership Act, enabling civil registration of same sex partnerships, came into force, but paid no cognisance of religious commitment. Quakers held the right to record marriages in their own Meetings for Worship from early times and discussions around this matter now began in Yearly Meetings. In 2009, at the momentous Yearly Meeting Gathering in York, deep consideration of the quotation from George Fox ‘we marry none, it is the Lord’s work and we are but witnesses’ led to a clear minute that the Yearly Meeting wished to be allowed to celebrate same sex marriages. Friends also recognised a compulsion to act along with other groups to promote same sex marriage and change the law.
Until 2013 Quaker marriages could not be included in the records kept by the civil registration officers but since 2009 all Quaker marriages have been regarded without distinction by Quakers. In 2013 the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act was placed on the statute books for England and Wales and in 2014 the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act became law. Whilst the direction in which the law was moving was clear, Michael Booth recalled some of the intricate arguments about process and legal regulations that had to be discussed with civil servants.
As the talk ended, a mother told of the hardship her son had endured through his childhood and into adult life and another Friend of the danger he and his partner had incurred living as a couple even in 1967, he not yet twenty-one years of age and his partner a little older. They are married now and together uphold our Meeting.
We recalled George Fox’s words: ‘For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord only… we are but witnesses.’
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