Minute: New Brunswick Meeting on Sexual Orientation

New Brunswick Friends Meeting

The following minute was approved by New Brunswick Friends Meeting at the Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business on Second Month, seventeenth day, 2008:

We, the members of the New Brunswick Monthly Meeting, are led to profess our belief that the Spirit and Light of God can be found equally within loving heterosexual and homosexual persons and their relationships. We can have no unity with discrimination against homosexuality nor can we condone this discrimination with silence.

In the spirit of Love, Equality, Integrity, and Peace we find ourselves deeply troubled by expressions of homophobia voiced by some individuals during the 2007 general board meeting of Friends United Meeting in Kenya. We find this to be contrary to Friends’ testimony as to that of God in each and every person, and we are concerned about how these voices may lead to the advocacy of violence against gay and lesbian Friends

We ask whether or not Friends United Meeting’s good work is being poisoned by the intolerance of some individuals.

We are particularly troubled by the effect these beliefs and practices have on children and their families.    We implore New York Yearly Meeting to examine its relationship to Friends United Meeting within this next year and to witness clearly to the dignity of each and every person under God’s light. Our commitment to our Quaker values of integrity and equality leads many of us to question whether we as members of Yearly Meeting can continue to remain members and supporters of Friends United Meeting. We continue to hold all Friends in love and the Light. We encourage open, continued and loving dialogue between New York Yearly Meeting and all Friends United Meeting affiliated Friends.