Category Archives: LGBTQ & Gender

Carolina Quakers (A Few, at Least) Speak On HB2

As a Quaker Christian community, we at Spring Friends Meeting remember Jesus’ first public words. In the Nazareth synagogue (Luke 4), he said he was sent to preach good news to the poor, deliverance to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and liberty to those who are oppressed.

We also recall his declaration that those who welcomed the stranger were in fact welcoming him (Matthew 25). At Spring Friends Meeting, we feel called to this same mission, and seek to do our small best, as way opens. As part of that effort, we now express our deep distress at the recent passage by the North Carolina legislature of what is called HB2.

This legislation is much more extensive in scope and insidious in intent than the widely publicized restroom provision.

• House Bill 2 specifically omits sexual orientation from a status that can be protected from discrimination.
• It specifically bans municipalities and other local governments from enacting locally-approved legislation such as a higher minimum wage, anti-discrimination for persons who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender, safe-havens for undocumented immigrants or any measure which the State deems contradictory to its arbitrary will.
• The law also removes the ability for persons to use state courts for pursuing redress for discrimination.

We acknowledge the sincere fear that has induced many to support the law solely on the basis of its bathroom provision, and likely without knowledge of the bill’s other clauses. We believe this fear has been used to promote a broad range of real injustices through this law.

We see this law in its entirety as meant to increase oppression, reject and stigmatize those, who some see as strangers, and increase hardship for the poor and rejected.

We are even more dismayed and saddened that this action is supported by some in the name of Christianity, and what they call “religious liberty.”

Orlando & Friends: A Quaker Prophet Speaks

Therefore, although I do not defend homosexuality any more than I would attempt to defend blue eyes, I do defend homosexual people. I defend their right to be who they are; I defend their right to equality under the law; I defend their right to attend Quaker Meetings and to be a part of them; I defend the idea that they, too, are children of God, spiritual persons, deserving the love and care of God and of his children. I believe that statements to condemn them are violent statements and are the first step in depriving them of their rights, of abusing them, of physical violence on their persons.

Many are mistakenly assuming that I hold my position only because my son is gay and that I do it in defense of him. That is not the case. I feel as strongly about this issue as a [John] Woolman about slavery or an Amos [the biblical prophet] about oppression of the poor or as [the prophet] Jeremiah about religious form without obedience. . . .

People have been terribly upset with me because I have not stated that homosexuality is a sin. Those who know me know, of course, that I have always conducted my own life according to the highest standards of personal morality and ethics and that I do not condone sin any more than Jesus did. I have never condoned promiscuity whether heterosexual or homosexual. In that context, I have to believe that some homosexual acts are indeed sinful just as I believe that some heterosexual acts are sinful. I believe that any act, sexual or otherwise, that exploits, abuses or harms another individual is sinful.

. . . I believe that a church that spends its time in condemning will not reach the world with the love of Christ. I believe that the condemnation, judgment, and hatred of homosexuals is itself a sin and that it leads to violence against them, and that the spirit that bashes homosexuals is the same spirit that burned witches in Salem, hanged Quakers in Boston, and burned Jews in Buchenwald.

The Price of Prophecy: The Carolina Trial of Willie Frye

“As Friends, we must rise above the homophobic hysteria sweeping the country and seek to be a voice of reason, concern, and spiritual insight. We cannot afford to lose the soul of Quakerism by allowing ourselves to be caught up in the current compulsion to condemn and exclude. Naturally, we are stirred by the gay and lesbian rights movement. The civil rights movement of the sixties had much the same effect. Those of us who grew up in the South resisted and criticized it; we were hostile to it and felt threatened by it but, in the end, it compelled us to look within and what we found was raw prejudice that would not stand the objective scrutiny of the Inner Light.

The strength of Quakerism has always been found in our willingness to expose ourselves to that kind of examination and our further willingness to follow the revelation that the Light brings. It has been that willingness that has set us apart from other denominations and made us pioneers in areas of which we are now proud. It is time for us to hark back to our basic concepts in dealing with the present issue. The process has not failed us in the past. It will not fail us now if we have the courage to engage ourselves in it.”

OMG! It Hit The Fan This Week!

And Oh, The SHAME of It! Another big fan was spinning in New York City’s Town Hall Saturday night. And the stuff splattered in a distinctly southern direction. And alas, the bathroom humor allusions were all too, er, apt.

That is, North Carolina became a splattered, a punch line on Garrison Keillor’s nationally-broadcast Prairie Home Companion Saturday night: