Queer Quakers

This case study commenced with contacting key British and North American stakeholders in the Spring and early Summer of 2007, to discuss with them the best way of including LGBTQ Quakers in our research. These initial contacts proved to be invaluable in locating several clusters of participants: a regional existing “local Quaker lesbian and gay group” comprising members from several different Meetings, both urban and rural; a UK national organisation “Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship”; a national group in the USA for Quaker Lesbians, whose annual conference gathering was attended as participant observer by Heather White. Members of three Meeting Houses: one in the US state of Pennsylvania, one in central London and one in a South Coast of England city, were all involved in the project in various ways, and we also had helpful communication with the Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Concerns, USA. Consequentially, the interviews and focus groups took place in late Summer 2008. Overall, 11 individual interviews were conducted, and 3 focus groups, from two countries, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, with 24 participants. The transcriptions of recordings produced 125,000 words for analysis. In addition to this, there were numbers of email and telephone correspondences with Friends who could not or did not want to participate in a recorded interview or focus group, but were interested in responding to the project and making their own observations.