Quakers mark 50 years since gay rights affirmation

Peter Walker
The Guardian, Friday 13 September 2013 18.37 BST

It is a statement that would raise few mainstream eyebrows now. But this was 50 years ago: "An act which expresses true affection between two individuals and gives pleasure to them both, does not seem to us to be sinful by reason alone of the fact that it is homosexual."

The text comes from Towards a Quaker View of Sex, a pioneering and, at the time, hugely controversial book from the religious society, which provided perhaps the very first faith-based affirmation of gay equality and went on to be hugely influential, selling 500,000 copies.

While focusing most closely on homosexuality, which was then still three years away from being decriminalised, the publication also took decidedly liberal attitudes towards premarital sex and adultery, prompting praise from agony aunt Marjorie Proops in the Daily Mirror but predictable shock in the News of the World.

To mark the anniversary, the Quakers, officially known as the Religious Society of Friends, held a meeting in a hall in London on Friday to hear the sole surviving member of the group that produced the publication explain how it came about.

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