Quakers positive about homosexuality in 1960s
1968
Betty: “In recent years there have been points
where I have thought that there would be almost no way of going to
worship anywhere else because there is almost nowhere else where my
lesbianism would be as comfortably accepted. The book ‘Towards a Quaker
view of sex’), (published in 1963) was quite positive for the time. It
hit me, when I was 18, (1968) that it was towards ‘a’ Quaker view of sex, it
didn’t say this was ‘the’ view and for me coming out of a standard
Protestant church to suddenly discover a religious body which basically
said ‘Several people have got together and this is the view that we
have’ without being prescriptive.”
Gill: “In a guarded sort of way, it
wasn’t sort of, this is a terrible sin. It still saw homosexuality as
being a bit disordered but it was much more accepting. But it dealt
with various other issues like sex before marriage and living together
and so on and it was pioneering for its time in its non-judgementalist
way, and that started to change the atmosphere.”
Contributed by: Gill Coffin, 63, Betty Hagglund, 50