Freedom to Marry

A few weeks ago, at our Meeting for Worship for Business, my Quaker meeting was asked to help our Yearly Meeting with the wording of a minute about same-gender marriage.

Now, we Quakers tend to be bleeding-heart liberals, so I was surprised to find that there has been opposition to this within Yearly Meeting. All they are attempting to do is affirm any marriages performed in the care of Monthly Meetings, which is entirely appropriate. Despite appearances to the contrary, Quaker hierarchy is somewhat upside-down. In most religious organizations, authorities at the higher levels of the hierarchy dictate to the churches what the doctrine will be, a la Catholicism's Pope. In the Society of Friends, Yearly Meeting is just an organizational construct designed to help the Monthly Meetings communicate. Monthly Meetings, the ones with all those historic meetinghouses that dot the Southeastern Pennsylvania landscape, hold the most authority when it comes to what happens with Quaker decisions.

Now, my Monthly Meeting minuted our support of same-gender marriage ten years ago with a strongly-worded statement of the sanctity of marriage and the equality of everyone regardless of sexual orientation. Indeed, equality is one of the testimonies, the central tenets of Quakerism as I understand it. Our minute predates my involvement in Quaker meeting, but I embrace it wholeheartedly.

The Yearly Meeting minute is less emphatic (in my opinion) in its support of our LGBT members and attenders, and it has been a source of controversy. I was surprised to see that some people present at the Yearly Meeting last summer when this was discussed stood aside when the minute was approved. I couldn't conceive of Quakers (and one of those people is soon to be an officer of the Yearly Meeting) embracing equality but not fully embracing same-gender marriage. The minute affirms marriages performed by Monthly Meetings, not just within our Yearly Meeting, but all meetings everywhere. It is simply stated, yet something about it bothers me.

Here it is: "Philadelphia Yearly Meeting affirms the marriage of same-gender couples conducted under the care of Monthly Meetings of the Religious Society of Friends." Simple, right?

Well, yes, but I think it doesn't go far enough. I may be misguided, but I think this minute is meant for outside consumption, to state the Quaker position on this for non-Quakers. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is a very visible body of Quakers and can be expected to speak for its Monthly Meetings to the world. Our Faith & Practice book is very careful to use gender-neutral pronouns when discussing marriage, so same-gender marriage seems to be tacitly accepted (and this document dates back at least a decade). Making a statement that is not clear, unequivocal and emphatic seems to me to be moot. We already support marriage, whoever the participants are; making a separate statement of support of same-gender marriage must strengthen that tacit acceptance in some visceral way to make any sense to me. If Quakers come out with a weak statement of support, then I think that support can easily be called into question by non-Quakers, which weakens our credibility.

Friends have noted that the word "affirm" has special meaning for Quakers, and that is very true. Quakers don't swear to tell the truth in a court of law, for instance; we affirm that we tell the truth all the time, not just when there is legal consequence if we don't. However, non-Quakers don't invest such power in affirmation, nor are they necessarily aware of the strength of it in Quaker circles. While this minute may be a powerful statement to Quakers, others may not see it that way.

This is my objection to the wording of the minute. Perhaps I haven't been a Quaker long enough to truly understand the power of affirmation. But I think the mainstream media would see it as weak, which undermines the actual strong advocation of equality in marriage that so many Quakers espouse. We need to "place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take," as Thomas Jefferson famously wrote of the Declaration of Independence. There is no room for ambiguity here.