I have heard it said
from official Quaker quarters that we should not call a same sex
union a 'marriage' or call the ceremony a 'wedding'. This includes
not using the words on the certificate. (NB: it seems that this was a misunderstanding, and hopefully the revised marriage procedure which treats everyone as equally as we possibly can under the law and uses the terms 'wedding' and 'marriage' for all will be accepte3d at Yearly Meeting next week. However, my own feelings in what follows still stand.)
It seems to me that
Quakers have got so caught up in legal procedure and respectability
that we have forgotten our heritage.
The original purpose of
a Quaker marriage certificate was to provide public recognition of
the act of marriage. It was signed by everyone present to give legal
weight to the public declaration by showing that it was witnessed by
lots of people. The certificate could be presented by the meeting to
a magistrate to show that the couple’s children were not bastards
and that they could hold property together and bequeath it to them,
and so subvert the challenges of disaffected relatives.
We need to go back to
our radical roots and actively demonstrate total equality by using
exactly the same language on our marriage certificates irrespective
of the sex of the couple. These means calling it a marriage and
calling the ceremony a wedding, since there are no better words
available.
It took a 100 years
before there was implicit recognition of Quaker marriages in law
(Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act 1753), and nearly another 100 years
before there was explicit recognition (Marriage Act 1836). It will
hopefully not take as long for full equality in marriage to be
recognised in law, but in the meantime we should boldly witness to
full equality for Quaker marriage in our meetings for worship, and
leave the civil partnership legislation to it's own devices.
1 comment:
I am pleased to see that the proposed revision of Quaker Faith and Practice to allow for same sex marriages is to go before Yearly Meeting at the end of the month, with full equality and the vagaries of the Civil Partnership law kept out of the way.
Post a Comment