Minnesota Quakers Won't Certify Marriages Until It's Legal For Everybody

A Quaker group in Minneapolis-St.Paul has announced that they will no longer certify marriages until the right is granted to everybody.

"We're simply trying to be consistent with the will of God as we perceive it," said Paul Landskroener, clerk of the Twin Cities Friends Meeting, in an interview with MPR's All Things Considered on Monday. The congregation will continue to hold both opposite-sex and same-sex weddings at its meeting house, but will no longer sign the legal marriage certificate for opposite-sex couples. Instead, couples will need to have the certificate signed by a justice of the peace. "Everything else proceeds as it normally has, except that we will not sign the marriage certificate," Landskroener said. Unlike many churches, Quakers do not have ordained ministers. Couples are married by appearing before the congregation and speaking their vows to each other. Several witnesses then sign the marriage certificate to pronounce the couple legally married. The Twin Cities Friends Meeting reached its decision in November after three years of discussion. The group plans to revisit the decision in three years.

UK Quakers Support Marriage Equality

The Quakers, one of the UK's oldest denominations, are going to perform same-sex marriages in their churches and will ask the British government to make them legal.

The Quakers - also known as The Religious Society of Friends - are likely to reach consensus on the issue of gay marriage without a vote at their annual gathering in York on Friday. They will also formally ask the government to change the law to allow gay people to marry. Quaker registrars, like rabbis and Church of England priests, have the authority to marry heterosexual couples on behalf of the state. But many British Quakers feel it is wrong to exclude a religious commitment from civil partnerships and want the right to marriage extended to same-sex couples too. The Quakers has welcomed same-sex unions for more than two decades, allowing local groups to celebrate same-sex commitments through special acts of worship.