Quakers in Britain are to allow same-sex couples to marry, in defiance of traditional religious teaching and civil law.The church, also known as The Religious Society of Friends, has accepted homosexuality for decades and already blesses civil partnerships; but now members gathered for their Yearly Meeting have agreed to allow gay couples to marry in exactly the same way as heterosexual couples do.
They acknowledge the move would be illegal in Britain, where same-sex couples are only allowed to be legally united in civil partnerships; but they say they will lobby politicians to change the law so that their registrars, who have the authority to perform legally binding marriage ceremonies, can allow gay couples to marry.
This is not the first time that the Quakers have led the way. They began the British campaign against the slave trade with the publication of a diagram showing the cross section of a ship in which slaves lay shoulder to shoulder. They were also leaders in prison reform and the treatment of the mentally ill.
Banned by law from politics and the universities, many Quakers went into commerce and industry, where philanthropists such as Joseph Rowntree provided his workers with modern benefits such as free education, medical care and a pension fund.
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