I found the entry well-written and very enlightening. I have two comments. [1] The absence of references is frustrating. I am particularly interested in Calderone's finding that the pinnacle of sexuality is the "permanent man-woman bond," and I would like to read the passage in context. I wonder whether she truly believed what she wrote. Traditionally, liberals who have advocated tolerance for gay people have always been under great pressure to reassure strait people that they nevertheless represent the pinnacle of humanity. Whether Calderone was complicit in such supremicist ideology or simply capitulated with it in order to be heard, an accurate assessment of her pioneering role in establishing a rational attitude towards sexuality needs to be seasoned with this gaffe -- which actually fails the Quaker testimony on equality. [2] It should be stressed that this biography repeats a very striking historical correlation between Quakerism, feminism, liberal ethics, and an advocacy for acceptance of same-sex relationships. Calderone is properly seen in the light of the sexual morality of Elias Hicks -- who taught in the 1820s that ALL human passions had the ability to bring the believer into the knowledge of God's love; Hicks's follower Lucretia Mott, who in 1849 delivered a sermon to medical students endorsing the goodness of human instincts; Hicks's "chosen historian," Walt Whitman (a personal friend of Lucretia Mott); the cross-dressing lesbian Quaker feminist, Susan B. Anthony; America's first lesbian minister, a former Quaker named Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford; and S. Weir Mitchell's successful 1896 novel, "Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker" about a "love affair" between a fair-haired Quaker "girl-boy" and a muscular "perverted Quaker with the blue eyes." In the twentieth century, the pattern is repeated in the stories of Rufus Jones's occasional valorization of Walt Whitman; the World War 2 activities of the Quaker Emergency Services; the gay-friendly "socials" of Philadelphia Quakers in the 1950s, mentioned by Marc Stein; the lives of Quaker activists Bayard Rustin and Ham Sok Han; and the ground-breaking 1963 British publication, Towards a Quaker View of Sex. Ultimately, of course, this all boils down to the true implications of "inner light" theology -- the belief that human conscience, in direct communion with God, can receive moral guidance which trumps Biblical and ecclesiastical tradition. Given the homophobia in the Bible and in Christian tradition, there were no people of faith who benefited more from the liberation theology of "inner light" than gay people. Chairease (talk) 22:00, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
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