Thursday, September 11, 8pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

Join Heather White and author Brian Blackmore in discussion of the newly published To Hear and to Respond: The Quakers’ Groundbreaking Push for Gay Liberation, 1946-1973 (Brill Research Perspectives in Humanities and Social Sciences, 2025).

In this book, Blackmore tells the story of Quaker support for gay rights in the mid-20th century as demonstrated through experiments in criminal justice reform, challenges to Christian moral codes, advocacy for the decriminalization of homosexuality, and efforts to instigate attitudinal change both within and beyond the Quaker world. Quaker initiatives during this era included the first social service organization for gay people in the U.S., the first public and positive statement on homosexuality from a religious perspective, and the first public statement in support of bisexuality from a religious assembly. Contrary to the general assumption that religious groups were antagonistic toward LGBTQ persons at that time, Quakers were present at the Stonewall riots, instrumental in organizing the first pride parades in multiple major U.S. cities, and they provided training, leadership and support for a number of early gay rights organizations.

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Hosted by LGBTQ Religious Archives Network.