Wild Opinions

A New York Times Pride op-ed on “Queer vs. Gay” is a reminder that we are focusing on the wrong things.

A few people reached out this week asking for my opinion on the “I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters.” op-ed in the New York Times.

First, without digressing too much, I should mention that I too love giving my opinion on things. In fact, that’s the raison d’être of this newsletter. I even have a theory about it: the 19 years I spent as a civil servant at the World Bank and the United Nations [2001–2020] involved a lot of shutting up—or at least hiding my own opinions (to a certain extent, of course). I now feel entitled to give my opinion on almost everything here, or at least everything LGBTQ+-related. That, combined with a healthy dose of self-indulgence and a mildly inflated ego, explains a lot.

So I did what any opinionated person would do: I had an opinion before reading the article or even gaining more knowledge on Matthew Vines. Granted, I have been busy with other things as the French are winning the World Cup. Mostly, I texted friends that all the hand-wringing over semantics was beside the point. As I have written before, instead of waiting for a savior—whether public opinion, corporations, Democrats, or liberal democracies—LGBTQ+ people should focus on harnessing and exercising power as we continue our journey toward liberation in this new world order. That was the point of my Washington Blade op-ed earlier last month, and really the point of my more economically focused Inc. piece last week. It is a time when we should focus our energy on building, harnessing, and exercising our power.

I eventually decided I owed both Mr. Vines and you the courtesy of actually reading his op-ed. Here’s the short version.

Matthew Vines argues that replacing “gay” with “queer” risks weakening the message that helped secure marriage equality: that sexual orientation is innate and that gay people seek the same love, commitment, and family life as everyone else. He writes:

The faithful relationship highlighted by the campaign for marriage equality helped me see that same-sex love could be just as profound and enduring as heterosexual love.

While acknowledging that “queer” is a broader and more inclusive umbrella term, he contends that its increasingly ideological use blurs that message, making it easier for critics to frame LGBTQ+ rights as a cultural movement rather than a civil rights issue. As support for same-sex marriage softens among conservatives, Vines argues that restoring the clarity of the original gay rights message is essential to protecting its gains.

But the broader trend of casting the queer net ever wider has muddled a once clear public message about who gay people are.

As for the author himself, the 36-year-old Matthew Vines is one of the best-known advocates for reconciling Christianity and homosexuality. He rose to prominence in 2012 after a viral lecture challenging traditional biblical interpretations of same-sex relationships and later founded The Reformation Project, which works to make Christian churches more affirming of LGBTQ+ people. An admirable endeavor. He is the author of God and the Gay Christian, which I confess I have not read. He is also, as you just read, a strong advocate of monogamy. Much of his work has focused on persuading religious conservatives that gay people deserve full acceptance, a background that helps explain why his New York Times essay places such emphasis on messaging, persuasion, and appealing to audiences that remain skeptical of LGBTQ+ rights.

After reading the article and checking Matthew Vines’s biography, I came away reassured that I am not the only white gay guy in the U.S. who feels spectacularly qualified to opine on absolutely everything, including the deepest aspirations of LGBTQ+ people everywhere.

My main additional takeaway is that for our opponents to portray queer liberation as a dangerous ideology is not a result of us muddying the semantics; it is the latest iteration of the oldest political playbook: scapegoating a minority. It is a reminder that our decades-long effort to be more palatable did not, in the end, inoculate us against backlash. That is because homophobia has always been about more than prejudice; it is also about power. If the recent retreat from DEI has taught us anything, it is that the backlash was never really about meritocracy. It was about the perception that our marginalized community had finally found a way to claim a larger share of economic, political, and cultural power—and that, for some, would always be unacceptable.

A second thing that struck me, as someone who believes in God, is that I simply do not believe LGBTQ+ people were created to preserve the status quo. I do think, for example, that our existence challenges the concept of society as simply the aggregation of nuclear families. It expands the circle of mutual responsibility, a concept that threatens many. There is something inherently disruptive about our existence and our quest for meaning. Every generation of LGBTQ+ people has expanded society’s understanding of love, family, gender, or freedom. The idea that our highest calling is to reassure the majority and avoid rocking the boat strikes me as fundamentally at odds with our history.

I also couldn’t help wondering whether the New York Times chose an odd moment for this intervention. On the last day of Pride Month—and the very day the Supreme Court delivered its decision on trans athletes—it decided to publish an essay by a relatively niche figure (however admirable his work building crucial bridges with evangelical Christians is), arguing that we should rethink the language we use to describe ourselves. It felt strangely disconnected from the battles we are actually fighting.

More broadly, I felt that Matthew Vines is relitigating a debate that is at least three decades old without having done the research, perhaps best articulated in Michael Warner’s 1999 The Trouble with Normal: whether respectability politics advances equality or simply rewards those LGBTQ+ people who are already easiest for the majority to accept while leaving everyone else behind. I would encourage Mr. Vines to go do mushrooms in a Radical Faerie commune, spend time with a lesbian activist in Sousse, or sit with a trans woman in India before assuming there is a single aspiration that defines LGBTQ+ lives. The politics of acceptability is an old debate, one that only makes sense if we acknowledge the extraordinary diversity of our community while remembering that our unity is our greatest strength at this particular moment.

Reading the essay didn’t really change my mind. If anything, it reinforced my view that we are spending an awful lot of time debating labels—and how to make ourselves fit in better—while our opponents are busy entrenching LGBTQ+ people as second-class citizens. The words we use matter, of course, and everyone should be free to describe themselves however they choose. I use LGBTQ+ in this newsletter because it is the broadest tent and the one that best fits the work I spend most of my time doing around our collective economic power.

My argument remains that “queer liberation” is secured less by winning arguments over terminology than by building the political, economic, and cultural power needed to defend them. Also, we do not break the family; that’s a given.

I am always wary of people asking us to relitigate our language, our values, or our unity at precisely the moment when we have much more urgent work to do, imho.

Disclaimer: This newsletter reflects my personal views and analysis. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or representative of any organization with which I am professionally associated.