Friends share their experiences of committed relationships

Yearly Meeting Gathering will consider committed relationships. Anne van Staveren heard from Quakers who have experienced a range of attitudes towards their sexuality.

Respect the wide diversity among us in our lives and relationships. Refrain from making prejudiced judgements about the life journeys of others. Remember that each one of us is unique, precious, a child of God.
(Advices and Queries 1.02 22)

“People fall in love with each other’s souls and what they do with the bodies those souls come in is a lot less relevant,” says Sarah. She delights that she has “found someone whose soul is a match for mine. I am so lucky.”

Sarah has been with her male partner for 15 years and they have two children. Their 11-year-old son Jamie wears a T-shirt that says: “Love is a human right.” And he knows his parents love each other and both are bisexual.

“We walk a tightrope,” says Sarah “but we are robust.” The couple are determined to witness to the truth and so explain their relationship to schoolteachers and to parents of their children’s friends. They are not married. “Do people need a public oath to keep them faithful? If so, they are not married in the grace of God. We witness against the outward forms in religion. We do not have​
the sacrament of baptism, so why the sacrament of marriage?”

She says Quakers have something precious in their acceptance of people who are lesbians, homosexuals and transgendered. “We need to articulate it and stand by it. In the lesbian and gay community there are a lot of people hungry for the spiritual home which Quakers can provide.”

“Quakers have an amazing ability to listen in love to each other,” she says. However, not all Quakers are so supportive. Sarah would suggest they need to be less obsessed with the physiological questions, of thinking what fits where, and instead remember that a committed relationship is the marriage of two souls.

Sarah and her partner feel upheld by their Quaker meetings, and by the Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship (QLGF), which accepts them as they are. She knows each generation is more accepting of people’s sexuality and says hopefully “my children will grow up in a world where it is alright”.

Richard of Littlehampton says changes in the law have made huge differences and so many well-known people are prepared to be open about their sexuality, including MPs and police chiefs. Teenagers, though, can still face pressure to conform which can lead to mental ill health.

He says he has led a double life. He’s now 60 years old, gay and, in the past, bisexual. Homosexuality was illegal in his teenage years and so he denied his sexuality until he was 21. He recalls a car journey: “There were three of us travelling in the back and I had my arm round my girlfriend’s shoulders. The other man let his arm fall on mine and I understood at once.”

Reading a paragraph on same sex relationships in Harvey Gillman’s A Light That is Shining convinced him Quakers were more tolerant of sexual diversity than other churches. When he joined his local meeting he and a lesbian Friend set up a local QLGF group called Glad Friends which received support and encouragement from local Quakers.

However, in response to a letter to all the Meetings in the area they received an unpleasant vitriolic letter, written by an individual and not on behalf of the local meeting this person attended.

In the mid 1990s some meetings, like Hall Green, had a study in relationships. Betty who helped run the study felt it enabled the meeting to move from ambivalence to acceptance. She met Gill 30 years ago and they became partners in 1992. They look back with great joy on their partnership celebration at Hall Green Meeting House in 2005. “We felt very cherished. I know there’s lots of controversy now because people want civil partnerships as part of meeting for worship. That wasn’t possible for us but we felt upheld and accepted as a couple.”

Gill grew up in the Church of England which was not at all inclusive. When she was 18 years old she knew she was lesbian. But that was in 1961; homosexuality was still illegal and lesbians were completely hidden. She married a Quaker man but after 12 years and two sons later, the marriage ended. “It was like being an adolescent again: I had to rethink who I was.” Feminism and the local gay community were quite exciting.

Susan has had mixed support from Friends. She explains: “I was married for 19 years having met my husband at school and gone out with him since we were 17. I had my doubts about marriage but didn’t feel I could let anyone down. When I was about 25, my father, to the shock of us all, announced that he was gay. My parents retired to the south coast where he was able to meet men friends but they had to keep all this quiet from their meeting and from our relatives.

“When my husband left me I was devastated at first but after the initial shock, admitted my sexuality to myself. I joined the Friends Homosexual Fellowship at the same time as Alex. We were put in touch and after one meeting and three months of letter writing it really was love at first meeting and we realised that we wanted to share our lives. Alex came to live with me leaving behind her husband, her 19-year-old son and all her friends. My parents had moved to be near me in the hope that I would be able to look after my mother when my father went off to visit his men friends. Their move coincided with Alex moving in with me – lousy timing!

Alex’s son was incredibly mature and he gave her his blessing.”

Her father accepted the relationship, her mother didn’t. Their meeting didn’t support Alex and she’s stopped attending. “It is amazing that our relationship has survived all that it has but it has made us very strong as a couple. The meeting has changed over the years and we are officially ‘out’ which is a tremendous relief.”

Around 40 years ago Friends Homosexual Fellowship was founded to reach out to isolated gay men. Some had lost their jobs, their homes and been imprisoned because of their sexuality. Those men are now in their 60s and in general, society’s attitudes have changed.

The Britain Yearly Meeting Findings exercise requested by Meeting for Sufferings enabled meetings to move on. Phil Lucas, who facilitated the discussion at Quaker Life Representative Council, says some meetings had simply never addressed the questions so prejudices lay undisturbed. However, having to put heart and mind to it, meetings often moved on. “If we are to put the testimony to equality into action, we have to allow them to be treated equally,” he says. He recognises that he grew up with inherent inbuilt prejudices but came to realise that there was the same quality of self-giving love in same-sex as in heterosexual relationships.

Some names have been changed.