Friend George Willoughby

George Willoughby died January 5th in the wee smalls. He died at home, surrounded by family and love. George was 95.

Lillian died just under a year ago. (Click here and here for more.)

There is so much I could say about George that none of the few things I could put here seem appropriate. I am honored to have called him Friend and friend, I will miss him, and I celebrate his life.

George's Memorial will be Saturday, February 6th from 2-5 pm at Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, 1515 Cherry Street.

Blessed be.

Britain Yearly Meeting and marriage equality - go, BYM!

Blessed be! - sm

News release and background on Committed Relationships paper for YMG09

News Release
31 July 2009
Quakers consider committed relationships

Quakers in Britain today concluded a long and profound process of discernment about the way forward for Quaker marriage and approach to same sex partnerships.

The minute recording their decision is as follows:

Minute 25 Britain Yearly Meeting 31 July 2009

Further to minute 17, (attached) a session was held on Tuesday afternoon at which speakers shared personal experiences of the celebration and recognition of their committed relationships. These Friends had felt upheld by their meetings in these relationships but regretted that whereas there was a clear, visible path to celebration and recognition for opposite sex couples, the options available for couples of the same sex were not clear and could vary widely between meetings. Friends who feel theirs to be an ordinary and private rather than an exotic and public relationship have had to be visible pioneers to get their relationship acknowledged and recorded.

This open sharing of personal experience has moved us and added to our clear sense that, 22 years after the prospect was first raised at Meeting for Sufferings we are being led to treat same sex committed relationships in the same way as opposite sex marriages, reaffirming our central insight that marriage is the Lord’s work and we are but witnesses. The question of legal recognition by the state is secondary.

We therefore ask Meeting for Sufferings to take steps to put this leading into practice and to arrange for a draft revision of the relevant sections of Quaker faith and practice, so that same sex marriages can be prepared, celebrated, witnessed, recorded and reported to the state, as opposite sex marriages are. We also ask Meeting for Sufferings to engage with our governments to seek a change in the relevant laws so that same sex marriages notified in this way can be recognised as legally valid, without further process, in the same way as opposite sex marriages celebrated in our meetings. We will not at this time require our registering officers to act contrary to the law, but understand that the law does not preclude them from playing a central role in the celebration and recording of same sex marriages.

We have heard dissenting voices during the threshing process which has led to us this decision, and we have been reminded of the need for tenderness to those who are not with us who will find this change difficult. We also need to remember, including in our revision of Quaker faith and practice, those Friends who live singly, whether or not by choice.

We will need to explain our decision to other Christian bodies, other faith communities, and, indeed to other Yearly Meetings, and pray for a continuing loving dialogue, even with those who might disagree strongly with what we affirm as our discernment of God’s will for us at this time.

Following the decision, Martin Ward, clerk of Quakers Yearly Meeting said: “This minute is the result of a long period of consultation and what we call “threshing” in our local meetings, culminating in two gathered sessions of our Yearly Meeting. At these sessions, according to practice, we heard ministry arising out of silent worship which led us to discern the will of God for the Religious Society and record it in this minute.”

Ends

Media Information
Anne van Staveren
0207 663 1048
07958 009703
annev@quaker.org.uk
www.quaker.org.uk

For interviews and photographs during Yearly Meeting Gathering contact Anne van Staveren on 07958 009703. Media attendance is limited. The business sessions of Yearly Meeting Gathering are not open to the media. A background paper on Quakers and committed partnerships is available from annev@quaker.org.uk

Notes to the Editor:

• Quakers are known formally as The Religious Society of Friends.

• Quakers were given the right to conduct marriages in England and Wales in 1753, but case law before that recognised the validity of Quaker marriages.

• Quakers began to call for a sexual morality based on the worth of relationships in 1963 with the publication of 'Towards a Quaker view of Sex'. Since then, Quakers have developed through tolerance to widespread acceptance of same sex partnerships, particularly since the formation of the now Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship in 1973. Meeting for Sufferings minuted appreciation of gay and lesbian Quakers' contribution in 1988.

• There was no formal stage of 'recognising' same sex partnerships nationally as Quaker procedures allowed it to happen: there was nothing against it. The first meetings for commitment were in 1996. Since then, around twenty local meetings have celebrated same sex relationships through an official meeting for commitment.

• Following the Civil Partnership Act of December 2005, same sex couples in England, Wales and Scotland, who share Quaker beliefs may opt for a blessing or commitment ceremony after entering a civil partnership.

• The Civil Partnership Act allows same sex partnerships to be registered as civil partnerships in law, but such registrations cannot take place in the context of religious worship. Civil partnership is not recognised as marriage, although registered civil partners share almost the same legal rights and responsibilities as heterosexual couples.

• The total number of civil partnerships formed in the UK since the Civil Partnership Act came in December 2005 is 26,787. (Office for National Statistics)

• Minute 17 reads:

YEARLY MEETING
OF THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS (QUAKERS) IN BRITAIN
AT THE YEARLY MEETING
HELD IN YORK DURING THE YEARLY MEETING GATHERING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK
25 July – 1 August 2009

Minute 17: Committed relationships: introduction

The report ‘Exploring our attitudes to committed partnerships’ (pages 61-64 of Documents in advance) has been introduced to us through a personal account of one Friend’s experience of the varied committed relationships in his family and his Quaker community.

We receive minute S/08/11/3 of Meeting for Sufferings held 1 November 2008 on the recognition of partnerships under the auspices of Britain Yearly Meeting. In the light of our testimony to equality we are asked by Meeting for Sufferings to consider how we should celebrate and recognise committed relationships within our Quaker community and what revisions of Quaker faith & practice would follow from this to include same sex partnerships.

We have opportunity at an open session on Tuesday afternoon to hear speakers who will share their personal experiences of commitment, to be followed by response groups, and, on Wednesday evening, special interest groups. We will return to this matter on Thursday afternoon, and to the two requests which Meeting for Sufferings has put to us to:

i) Endorse the conclusions of the Quaker Life minute that it would not be right at this time either to lobby government for further changes in the law on committed partnerships nor to surrender our legal authority to conduct heterosexual marriages;

ii) Explore the issue and give broad guidance on how changes suggested in the Quaker life minute might be expressed in chapter 16 of Quaker faith & practice.

Mid-Winter Gathering 2009 Epistle from Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns

[note: this should soon appear on the relevant page of the FLGBTQC website.]

02/15/2009

Dear Friends General Conference and Friends Everywhere,

We send loving greetings to you with this letter, as well as an invitation.

We are gathered at Camp Adams near Molalla, OR for the 2009 annual Midwinter Gathering of Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Concerns. During our time together, we have been exploring this year’s theme “Faith Calls for Justice on the Same Terms.” On our first evening together, we heard stories from and about our spiritual pioneers (both in modern and biblical times). We spent time in worship and worship sharing. We tended to the business of our beloved community. We participated in interest groups on a variety of offerings including trans and other queer concerns, Walt Whitman, Love Makes a Family, singing and others. On Saturday evening, we were blessed with a one-person play by a member of our community who has written about trans folk in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. During all of these times, as well as in fellowship around meals, during walks in the woods surrounding the grounds, and in private conversations we found a blessed time to renew our spirits and support each other.

During our meeting for worship with attention to business a letter from the clerks of the 2009 FGC Gathering was read. While we were glad to learn of the work being done to help ensure the safety of our families who are planning to attend this year’s gathering in Virginia, we were also saddened that once again the Gathering is being held in a place where state laws and constitutions have been re-written to take away our civil rights, including freedom of religion and equality. It is with great sadness of heart that we realize how difficult it is becoming for FGC to find a site for the Gathering where this is not the case. More and more, our families fear that they will not be allowed to make medical decisions about their loved ones or they fear that authorities may not recognize their adoptions, civil unions, and legal marriages. We continue to face the nightmare that loved ones may find themselves alone, while we are prevented from being with them at the times they most need us!

We remembered with gratitude that FGC joined with us in creating opportunities for witnessing to the power of God’s Love in our lives and in our marriages the last time the Gathering was in Blacksburg, and that they stood with us and spoke out for us at that time. We also remember with gratitude the loving minute approved by the FGC Central Committee a few years ago affirming “Our experience has been that spiritual gifts are not distributed with regard to sexual orientation or gender identity. Our experience has been that our gatherings and Central Committee work have been immeasurably enriched over the years by the full participation and Spirit-guided leadership of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer Friends. We will never go back to silencing those voices or suppressing those gifts. Our experience confirms that we are all equal before God, as God made us, and we feel blessed to be engaged in the work of FGC together."

We acknowledge and appreciate the many times FGC and our meetings have stood for us and with us by approving minutes of support and acknowledging and celebrating our unions and families. We still have work to do. We are now led to invite you to explore ways you, our meetings and faith communities can walk with us in witnessing to the World what we know experientially; that God’s love is indivisible and is not withheld from anyone or any couple seeking to live faithfully in holy union. Our silence and the silence of supportive faith communities make it easier for those claiming to speak with the authority of faith to insert their religious doctrine into the laws that govern our lives, as witnessed recently with the passing of Proposition 8 in California.

Today we are called to:

• Invite FGC and our meetings to join us in bringing Quakers together to help us all understand what is meant by “that which God joins together.” Many meetings struggle with the issues marriage raises. What are the differences between marriage as a civil institution and as a “God anointed” union? How can Friends help in the struggle for full marriage equality for same sex couples?

• Invite FGC to join with FLGBTQC to consider together how and when to bear witness to our experience as a faith community concerning queer marriage and civil rights in part because many sites (like in Virginia) will give us Opportunities to witness to the power of God’s love in our lives and in our families.

• Invite FGC to convene a Gathering or small conference whose theme would be “Who so ever God has joined together” which would address issues of marriage, family and relationships of all orientations and gender. We would suggest that Friends from all “sides” of the marriage question be invited to participate.
  

• Invite our meetings to provide support committees for LGBTQ members and their families when meetings are discerning whether they can or cannot take their marriages under the meeting’s care or when those Friends are made vulnerable because of faith-based witness around civil and constitutional rights in the wider community.

• Invite meetings to participate fully in civil discussions and legislative activism to help speak Truth of our experience of God’s Love for all. Our work can minister to others as we share our own ongoing process as models for other faith communities. We see this as an Opportunity for our meetings to speak publicly to our deeply rooted experience that God calls us to lives of Love and that Love takes many forms.

• We ask FGC, monthly meetings and yearly meetings to raise up the issues of equality and the ways in which our LGBTQ families are most in danger when they travel or seek help, whatever those meetings’ views on LGBTQ marriage.

We want to affirm to you all the power of the witness that our straight allies bring to our own lives and in the wider community. We do not experience this issue as simply a matter of marriage rights, but as a need to affirm and recognize that it is the richness of diversity that has strengthened and nurtured this country and our faith communities through the ages. Friends have long witnessed to a testimony of equality and we ask Friends to join with us in asking our government for equal protection and equal rights for all people.

God has been joining members of our LGBTQ community in loving marriages and relationships for long before these modern times. We are certain that some day civil laws will be enacted that legalize and recognize LGBTQ marriages and other civil rights. We have faith that God will continue to bless our lives. We have hope that civil rights will be in our life times. We know that Love, radical Love, will prevail.

With love and on behalf of Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Concerns,



Karen Lightner and Neil Fullagar, co-clerks
Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC)
(contact info available here)

Lillian's obituary

Lillian's obit from the Daily News. - sm

Lillian Willoughby, Quaker activist, dies at 93

By JOHN F. MORRISON
Philadelphia Daily News

morrisj@phillynews.com 215-854-5573

LILLIAN WILLOUGHBY had a vision of a world at peace.

She and her husband, George, dedicated Quakers, chased this impossible dream all over the world, conducting nonviolent protests against war and preparations for war for nearly 70 years.

They even refused to pay federal taxes that they deemed were going to pay for war. As a result of these activities, they often ran afoul of law-enforcement and judicial officials who did not share their passion for peace.

Lillian Willoughby died Thursday just shy of her 94th birthday. She lived on the Old Pine Farm Land Trust in Deptford, Gloucester County, part of the New Jersey Green Acres program.

In 2004, she and other activists spent seven days in the federal detention center in Philadelphia for blocking the entrance to the Federal Building in a protest against the Iraq war. They chose jail over $250 fines.

In a statement read in court, she summed up her philosophy of peace and justice.

"I am approaching my 90th year," she said. "I had high hopes of leaving this earth confident that the people on it knew more about nonviolence and conflict resolution.

"Even after 9/11 we had a window of opportunity to do just that. By working with the United Nations and the World Court we could have helped build a stronger world community, a community of fairness and justice for all, where compassion, understanding, forgiveness, imagination, sharing and courage are valued and practiced."

In 2006, she and other older activists, including the poet Sonia Sanchez, then 72, were charged with defiant trespass for refusing to leave a Center City military recruiting station after trying to enlist to serve in Iraq. A judge dismissed the charges.

They called themselves the "Granny Peace Brigade."

In 2003, she and other demonstrators had their heads shaved outside the Liberty Bell in the name of peace. They intended to send the shorn hair to senators from Pennsylvania and New Jersey to express their opposition to the war.

From 1971 to 1987, Lillian and her husband ran a commune in West Philadelphia devoted to helping the community. The site included 20 houses that made up the Movement for a New Society.

The Willoughbys lived in a small third-floor apartment where they practiced living simply. When a Daily News reporter encountered them there in June 1980, they were baking their own bread. The group started the first Take Back the Night rally, an idea that became an annual anti-crime event.

Taking on the simple life was also a way to keep any income away from the federal government. Even so, the IRS confiscated their red Volkswagen for back taxes. During the auction at the IRS headquarters in Chester in 1970, the Willoughbys and supporters served lemonade in the hallway before submitting the winning bid of $900 to buy the car back.

Lillian was brought up on a farm in West Branch, Iowa. She attended a Quaker boarding school and later graduated from the University of Iowa. She became a dietician by trade and worked at hospitals and nursing homes.

She met her husband in Iowa. He was a conscientious objector during World War II and helped find homes for Japanese-Americans who had been put in camps at the outbreak of the war.

"She was loving, honest and forthright," said longtime friend and fellow Quaker Lynne Shivers. "She had a deep belief in the Quaker ideal of creating a nonviolent world. She reached out to people who were down, and cared about them."

She also is survived by three daughters, Sally, Anita and Sharon Willoughby; a son, Alan Willoughby, and three grandchildren.

Services: A Quaker memorial meeting will be held at a future date. *

Quakerism in the news

I was happy when I heard this last night on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. - sm

Oath of Office: To Swear Or To Affirm
All Things Considered, January 18, 2009 · The Presidential Oath of Office is laid out in the Constitution. But when Barack Obama takes it on Tuesday, he can choose not to swear. It's a choice all presidents have when being sworn in — a Quaker legacy.

Tongue-In-Cheek Quaker Alphabet Soup: NPR, NYT, and DNC/RNC Quakers

I suppose I should have expected a number of political messages in Meeting for Worship this First Day, after the historic Democratic National Convention this last week, and with the also-historic Republican National Convention coming up this next week. But as you can see, I was nonetheless unprepared for just how many political messages there were this morning!

For some actual, and quite good, information on branches of Quakerism in the US, see the Quaker Information Center's pages on Quaker Branches and Branches Today.

I have realized, both with today's messages in Meeting for Worship, and over the last few weeks of worship, that there really are more kinds of Friends in the US than I had earlier realized.

Oh, I knew about the "Big Three"; and not very long after I began worshipping with Friends, I felt like I could explain them reasonably well:

• Friends General Conference (FGC)
• Friends United Meeting (FUM)
• Evangelical Friends International (EFI)

And during our Mid-Winter Gathering of Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC) in North Carolina in 2007, I learned there are commonly considered to be five main branches of Friends in the US; and that in NC and some other areas, there are commonly considered to be one or two more. To FGC, FUM, and EFI, we add:

• Conservative Yearly Meetings (CYMs) -- Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative), or IYM(C), North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative), or NCYM(C), and Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) or OYM(C) (not to be confused with Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting, which is FGC-affiliated)
• Independent Monthly Meetings
• Holiness Quaker Churches

There are a few unofficial, unorganized-as-of-yet, kinds of Friends as well:

You may also be familiar with the term "NPR Quaker." This refers to the phenomenon of Friends who rise during Meeting for worship and begin their ministry with the phrase, "I was listening to NPR this morning, and..."

Recently, I've learned of at least two more kinds of Friends, and I expect to encounter another next week.

A few weeks ago, Beloved Wife and I discovered that there are also "New York Times Quakers" -- folks who begin their ministry with the phrase, "I was reading in the New York Times this morning about..."

And today, we learned there are DNC Quakers! These are Friends who begin their vocal ministry with phrases such as, "I was watching a lot of TV this week during the Democratic National Convention, and..."

I think that next week, we will encounter RNC Quakers: "I was listening to so-and-so's speech during the Republican National Convention, and..."

So, to our list of alphabet soup, we add:

• NPR Quakers
• NYT Quakers
• DNC Quakers
• RNC Quakers

...right?

(Yes, I am kidding.)