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Recognizing Diverse Households & Families

We have the capacity to fashion a world in which the inherent dignity of all people is nurtured, not undermined — a world in which economic rights are upheld as fundamental human rights.*

Many LGBT advocates suggest that having and exercising the right to marry is the only way LGBT people will gain full equality and access to the 1,138 economic and social protections provided by the federal government to married couples and their children, as well as to those protections provided through private employers or at local and state levels.

Should marriage be the only standard of worthiness by which diverse households and families should be accorded or denied basic economic and social protections?

The Quaker belief in the equal and intrinsic dignity and worth of every person and all peoples leads AFSC to support LGBT people who wish to marry while also challenging the idea that only married people are worthy legal recognition and basic economic protections.

Read the GAO Defense of Marriage Act report (PDF, 267 KB)

Read the Queers for Economic Justice summary, Economic Justice in America, 2005 (PDF, 31 KB)

More about the diversity of households and families in the United States >

* Putting Dignity & Rights at the Heart of the Global Economy: A Quaker Perspective

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