Brighton Quakers are to join in the city’s Gay Pride celebrations for the first time this year.

Members of Brighton’s Quaker community will be joining other local groups in the annual Pride parade on 4th August. They will also have a stall at Pride’s main event in Preston Park.

This year’s presence at Pride reflects the Quaker belief that “to reject people on the grounds of sexual orientation is a denial of God’s creation”. Quakers have been at the forefront of gay-friendly religious tolerance having published the first religious book sympathetic towards homosexuality as early as 1963 (Towards a Quaker view of sex- Publisher: Friends Home Service Committee- 1963) In 2006 Quakers were short-listed by readers of the Pink Paper for the “most gay-friendly organisations in Britain” award, the only religious group to be nominated.

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Media Information
Harvey Gillman
01273 721104
 zvi@gotadsl.co.uk
www.quaker.org.uk

Note for Editors:

• Quakers are known formally as the Religious Society of Friends.
• Approximately 25,000 people attend Quaker Meetings for Worship in the UK, and there are 500 Meeting Houses.
• Throughout their history Quakers have campaigned and struggled to promote the values of equality and human rights including the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, the improvement of prison conditions in the 19th century and peace work aimed at conflict resolution throughout the world.

What Quakers Say

• There is something sacred in all people.
• All people are equal before God and each person is a unique and precious child of God.
• Religion is about the whole of life.
• We meet in stillness to discover a deeper sense of God’s presence.