The Friends General Conference (FGC) is a Quaker organization in the unprogrammed tradition of the Religious Society of Friends which primarily serves affiliated yearly and monthly meetings in the United States. and Canada.
FGC hosts a very popular yearly gathering in early July for members of member organizations (although membership is not required to attend). It also operates a bookstore and a publishing house and provides lots of resources for Meetings and invididuals in the unprogrammed tradition of Friends.
FGC meetings have about the same number of members as in 1900, but this is only because of the addition of new unaffiliated meetings and the addition of former Orthodox meetings.
Friends soon realized that there were a substantial number of gay and lesbians attending FGC, and that they liked and admired them.FGC always took pride in its sense of inclusiveness, and the decision to provide a supportive environment came with what for Friends was surprising speed.
For the FGC in the future, the question is whether diversity of opinion and lack of clear guidance on moral issues involving sexuality before and after marriage will cause parents and youth who look to religion for ethical norms to ignore the Society of Friends.
In general, since Quaker decision making is generally based on a consensus method termed "unity" or "sense of the meeting", the percentage of individual Quakers who support equality for homosexuals may differ from the percentage of groups, even when weighted by membership, which have taken such stances officially.
Friends associated with FriendsGeneralConference (FGC), the more liberal group of Friends encompassing a large number of yearly meetings, and approximately a fifth of all Quakers in the country, are the most tolerant with many monthly meetings, some yearly meetings providing full equality for homosexuals including marriage.
Evangelical Friends Church Southwest, a yearly meeting and a member of EFI, states in its Faith and Practice that homosexuality is a sin and grounds for termination of employment in the church.
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