In 1963, a group of eleven British Friends calling themselves the Quaker Group on Homosexuality and Other Problems of Sex (QGH) published a 74-page pamphlet called Towards a Quaker View of Sex (TQVS). The pamphlet includes the earliest expression on record of a positive and public evaluation of gay sexuality from a Christian group.[1]

The origins of TQVS can be traced back to 1958, when a group of young Quaker Cambridge University students asked Anna Bidder, a Quaker zoology professor, what the Quaker religion had to say about homosexuality. The young students at Cambridge were concerned about a series of public scandals in the United Kingdom involving homosexual men, the tragic 1954 death of gay mathematician Alan Turing, and the 1957 publication of the Wolfenden Report, an official government document that called for the partial decriminalization of homosexual acts. The suicide of a Cambridge student known to be gay by his friends further elevated their concerns. Bidder recruited professionals in her Quaker community, including psychologists, educators, social workers, and prison officials, to produce a response for the young Friends. The group of Quaker professionals that Bidder had brought together met for the first time at the University Women’s Club in London. One member of the QGH reported that it was “like all the films where this kind of thing happens.” He explained, “you had to touch a certain door, and then it would open, and you would be in this secret room.” They appointed Bidder as their first chairman and conducted regular monthly meetings. Their goal was to discern “what Quakers could say to homosexuals and to others who found that society strongly condemned their sexual feelings and who found, too, that the expression of those feelings could lead to victimization, blackmail, and imprisonment, whereas ‘normal’ heterosexual conduct, however irresponsible, went virtually unchallenged.”[2] For over two years they met with experts in psychiatry, adolescent development, and social welfare, interviewed young adult Friends, and received letters from gay and lesbian Friends about their experiences with discrimination and injustice.

In 1962, they started holding weekly meetings with the intention of producing a public statement. They set a date for publication in coordination with an invitation from the British Broadcasting Company to interview QGH members on live television. On February 18, 1963, after five years of careful discernment and rigorous deliberation about what they wanted to say, the group published Towards a Quaker View of Sex and shocked the world by asserting that gay and lesbian sexuality was entirely consistent with Christian teachings.

Responses to the publication of TQVS were immediate on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain, it caused a media frenzy in major newspapers. Headlines read: “Quaker Group Rejects Church View of Sex,” “11 Quakers Attack Moral 'Hypocrisy,” and “Shock Sex Report from the Quakers.”[3] A heated debate erupted among British Friends, and many chose to express their approval or concerns in newspapers and Quaker magazines. The bookstore at Friends House in London, however, made a profit for the first time in its history, selling over 500,000 copies.

On the other side of the Atlantic, many gay liberation groups in the United States celebrated the publication of TQVS. The Mattachine Review, published by the California-based Mattachine Society, reprinted the pamphlet in three separate installments, claiming that it was “the soundest and most objective view yet published on the subject, and may well serve as a manual for all organizations working in this field.”[4] Major U.S. news organizations, including the Washington Post, the Washington Daily News, and LIFE magazine, mentioned TQVS in the months and years immediately following its publication. Some American Quakers praised the pamphlet while others condemned it, but talk about TQVS in public was discouraged. Copies of TQVS were allegedly available for purchase at Pendle Hill, a Quaker study center in Wallingford, PA, shortly after its release, but it was kept hidden from customers behind a counter in the bookstore.[5]

The publication of TQVS was a watershed event. Until its publication, most English-speakers had not heard a Christian voice limit the moralizing power of the Bible or question Christian attitudes towards homosexuality. After its publication, the claim that all Christian groups opposed gay and lesbian sexuality was nullified and rendered unsound.

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