LGBTQI WELCOME: Ann Arbor Friends Meeting welcomes LGBTQI people.
Ann Arbor Friends Meeting welcomes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex people into our community. The Quaker testimony on equality reflects our belief that there is that of God in everyone, thus we seek to treat everyone with dignity and respect. LGBTQI people of all ages are welcome in all our activities including our First Day (Sunday) School program for children and teens. Same-gender couples, like heterosexual couples, can marry under the care of the Meeting. Ann Arbor Friends Meeting contributes financially to Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC). You can learn more about them at their website.
Marriage in Ann Arbor Friends Meeting.
The Meeting recognizes in the traditional manner of Friends that no official of the Meeting marries a couple, but that the Meeting witnesses and celebrates the vows of the couple to each other.
The following statement was approved at the Meeting for Business of February 16, 1992:
It is therefore the sense of the Meeting that Ann Arbor Friends Meeting provides a clearness and oversight process for couples in the Meeting, whether of different sex or the same sex. If it is so recommended by the clearness committee and approved by the Meeting for Business, the Meeting witnesses and celebrates the couple’s commitment to each other, takes their relationship under its care, and gives its ongoing support. Couples have some latitude in the words they choose to use in their vows to each other; they may use the word marriage if they choose to do so. The Clerk or his/her representative signs appropriate legal documents certifying that the commitment has been witnessed after the manner of Friends.
Friends arrive at corporate decisions by achieving unity in a “sense of the Meeting,” and individual Meetings vary widely in many regards. Although Friends Meetings and Churches may differ in their practices on same-sex marriage (and other matters concerning LGBTQI people), a great many Meetings have approved minutes on same-sex marriage.