Join the Friends Historical Association for its 2023 Annual Members Meeting and Lecture on Saturday, November 4, 2023 at 11:00am – 1:00pm EDT on Zoom. This year’s lecture is “Towards a Quaker History of LGBTQ+ Inclusion and Gay Rights” by Brian Blackmore. Registration is required. Learn more and register here.
Many Friends are aware of Towards a Quaker View of Sex (1963), the first public and positive evaluation of gay and lesbian sexuality from a religious assembly, and yet many other important contributions made by Friends to the advancement of gay rights during the middle to late twentieth century are less well known. Additionally, the efforts to create greater inclusion for LGBTQ+ people in Quaker communities is rarely examined in historical studies of this era. This presentation seeks to stimulate the production of more scholarship on Quakerism and LGBTQ+ people by sharing key findings from over a decade of research. Come hear about the first social service organization for gay people in the United States established by Friends in the late 1940s, the portrayal of Friends as the first happy gay couple in an American novel, the important role Friends played in the development of the gay rights movement, and the evolution of Quaker attitudes towards lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in a pivotal period of Quaker history.
