The Politics of the Word Queer with Matthew Vines | Episode 305

Well, hello and welcome to Church and Main, a podcast for people interested in the intersection of faith, politics, and culture. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. In June of this year, an op-ed appeared in the New York Times that caused a firestorm. Now, it's not the first time that that's happened with an op-ed in the New York Times, but it's probably one that I actually paid attention to. The article had the title, I'm Gay, Not Queer, It Matters. And it was written by Matthew Vines, who is the founder and executive director of the Reformation Project. Now, this is a Bible-based Christian nonprofit, and it works to advance kind of what I would say is a theological, orthodox, and affirming vision of LGBTQ people for the church. Now, the article got a lot of reaction, and that's an understatement. Some thought that he was throwing transgender people under the bus, siding with more anti-gay conservatives. The article did bring up a lot of questions. What does it mean to be called queer instead of gay? What are the implications of using the word queer? What does the word even mean in that context, and what does using this word mean for LGBTQ equality? So today I'm going to talk with Matthew Vines about his article and the politics of the word queer. Before we get to that talk, a little bit about Matthew. As I said before, he's the founder and executive director of the Reformation Project and the author of God and the Gay Christian, The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships. He lives with his husband in Dallas, Texas. He launched the Reformation Project in 2013, and the Reformation Project's mission is to advance the full inclusion of gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians in the life of the church while remaining grounded in a, love of God, a love for the Bible, and a love for the church. And the Reformation Project hosts several events, including a conference and several groups for parents and pastors, as well as leadership training cohorts. So, here is my conversation with Matthew Vines on the difference between gay and queer. Well, Matthew, thank you for joining me today. I always like to start this podcast by learning a little bit about you and especially your faith back. All right. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's very nice to meet you, Dennis. My basic background is that I was raised in Wichita, Kansas in an evangelical Presbyterian church. It was part of the Presbyterian Church USA, which is the mainline Presbyterian denomination, but it was part of the evangelical wing of the PeaceUSA that really no longer exists. And my church followed that trajectory. So in 2011, the, church that I was raised in left the PeaceUSA for a more conservative Presbyterian denomination due to the denomination's change in stance on gay clergy in particular. So I feel like I had my feet in both worlds, I guess. that I did have a, I was in a church where, There was an awareness that this issue was being debated, but it was not being debated within the church, right? So the church was seemingly completely of one mind. There were not differing views that were vocalized in any way within the church community, but there was an awareness that there were other people outside of the church who we had some, in many cases, reluctant connection to, who were advocating for something, but it was seen as pretty beyond the pale. But so there was an awareness that the debate was happening, but also a frustration that the debate was happening. Okay. Just kind of curiosity, did your church leave for what they call ECO? No, it went to the EPC. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, the reason I asked is it actually worked. I've always been bivocational as a pastor, So I worked for the local presbytery here in Minnesota. So I was, and it was during that time. So very aware of what was going on and, and churches and kind of what they call gracious separation and all of that. So. Yeah, not an easy time. No, no. So yeah, that was my basic faith background. Okay. And then you've also kind of shared a little bit about your own journey coming out and your ministry. Would you be willing to kind of talk a little bit about that as well? Yeah, which part? Why don't we talk about first the coming out part? Okay, well, I came out to myself the fall of my sophomore year in college. And that I was only able to even ask myself those questions after I'd already gone through a fairly intensive process of reconsidering my beliefs about the topic. I had, the first year I was in college, done a Bible study with some other students in my Christian ministry, the Christian student ministry, about this topic because I was feeling increasingly deeply conflicted about it. Not because really of my own sexual orientation, but more I was just meeting more gay people who had been really terribly treated by their Christian families, churches, and meeting a lot of other people who weren't gay, but who had no interest in Christianity in no small part because the way they saw their friends who were gay be poorly treated by the church. And this bothered me quite a lot, especially because it didn't just seem to be an issue of being unkind, although that obviously is a big problem. It also seemed to be the actual belief and teaching itself that same-sex relationships, were intrinsically morally wrong that, placed a very heavy burden on people who were gay because it was telling them that the way that they were wired to experience and express romantic love, was something that they could never act on in any way at all. They could never go on a date. They could never hold someone's hand. They could never fall in love. And if they did, they would probably need to feel conviction about this and then try to walk away from that person. It felt like a pretty glaring double standard because that's not the standard that's given to anyone else. Everyone else is told that you should discipline your sexuality, you should seek to. Exercise self-restraint and self-control, but that ultimately you can express your sexuality in the context of a lifelong committed relationship of marriage. And so there's a productive, constructive channel for thinking about that for everyone else. And for gay people, the message was just, nope, nope, just shut it down entirely. And it also seemed to be born out of some level of ignorance about the reality that some people are even gay in the first place. And many people I knew Who believed that same-sex relationships Were morally wrong, Weren't really willing to acknowledge That some people are permanently and exclusively Attracted to the same sex There would tend to be a little bit more hand-waving around Well, some people may struggle with this Some people may have more temptations But that's not to say these things can't change And so. But I was at the point where I thought, well, it doesn't seem like they do change. This seems to be a fixed reality for a minority of people. And if the way that I'm supposed to feel okay about this theology and this teaching on same-sex relationships is by denying that reality, I'm not willing to do that. It feels like I'm being asked to kind of stick my head in the sand a little bit and just pretend that, oh, well, it might look like some people are gay, but maybe they're not. Maybe they could change if they tried harder. And that just didn't make sense to me. I just thought, no, I think some people are gay. And it seems to not be a choice. And also, I can't figure out what's wrong with same-sex relationships. I just can't figure out what makes them morally wrong. I could see a good argument for why that shouldn't be what literally everyone should do. Because then you would have logistical challenges with the continuation of the species. Great, absolutely. So if the argument is everyone needs to be in a same-sex relationship, I can be on board with not agreeing with that. But I cannot understand what the problem is with anyone being in a same-sex relationship, especially people who are gay, where it doesn't make any sense for them to be in a heterosexual relationship. And obviously, there's all sorts of these mixed orientation marriages that end in failure and great pain for both partners, not just for the gay one. So it doesn't really seem fair to any straight people either to be encouraging gay people to line up to marry them. And it just seems so just logically, I just thought none of this is making sense. It would seem like everything would be a lot cleaner and a lot better for everyone if you just let gay people understand. Be okay with who they are, and find somebody of the same sex to be able to build a life with, and they're going to be a lot happier, first of all. The straight people who don't marry them and are able to marry someone who is attracted to them are going to be a lot happier. And these sorts of committed lifelong same-sex relationships just seem like unalloyed good things. I just, going through the fruit of the spirit of Galatians 5, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control. I remember I actually asked a pastor at my childhood church, which of these qualities can a committed same-sex relationship not reflect? And he said, well, that's a good one. He said, they definitely love, yeah, joy, peace. It's like they got all the first eight, but maybe not self-control because if it's a sin, then it wouldn't be self-controlled act on it. I said, yeah, but that's kind of just circular reasoning. Like, if it is a sin, then you should not do it. But we're trying to figure out if it is a sin. So he decided, okay, the self-control one, maybe you could see that either way. But I thought that that was kind of significant. I was like, what other sin, reflects the fruit of the Spirit to this degree. I'm unaware of them if they're out there. And if so, they're not probably going to be sins I'm going to be overly concerned about because that doesn't make any sense. Sins are not supposed to reflect all the fruit of the Spirit. And so, yeah, I just couldn't figure out. It just seemed like nothing was adding up at all, that same-sex, monogamous, committed relationships could be very good things, that denying this possibility to gay people was very harmful. And it was all based on, so that's what led me my first year of college to go back to scripture to really want to study what are these passages that, people are interpreting to say that this thing that seems to make no sense is the only way that we can approach this. And so that's when I first did a deep dive and came to the conclusion that there was a lot more gray, not about whether or not the biblical texts on same-sex relations are positive or negative. Obviously, they're negative. But the question is, well, how similar are the things being described to what we're talking about? That's where the gray was entering the equation for me. I wasn't very compelled by the people who were trying to say, well, actually, you know, maybe shameful and degrading just means quirky. And maybe abomination just means silly. I'm exaggerating a little bit here, but I would read some of the affirming arguments that tried to say, no, actually, none of these passages are negative at all. I was like, oh, come on. Of course they're negative. But that doesn't resolve the question if the types of same-sex practices that they're talking about are fundamentally different than the types of same-sex practices we're talking about. So I'm happy to acknowledge that these texts are negative, but I still think that there may be a big difference between the types of committed, loving, same-sex marriage relationships and certainly whatever was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah or whatever may have been in view for Paul in Romans 1 where he describes it in a much more explicitly lustful way. Form so that for me i had to change my mind about all of that or really feel like at least. Yeah i just thought this doesn't make nothing made sense about the non-affirming teaching to me once, i recognized that gay people existed and once i recognized that their relationships could bear the fruit of the spirit it'd be one thing if people say well you know what if what if somebody just has a, you know, a terrible attraction to animals. Well, okay, that's not going to bear the fruit of the spirit. Like, that's obviously the thing itself. The issue is not just that it's not a choice, it's also that the thing itself that is, that you are drawn to is not something that is demonstrably bad in any way and actually seems to be demonstrably really good if it's done in a good way. So that's obviously not true of any of the other analogies that people would draw. So all the analogies people were trying to come up with just didn't make, sense, were not compelling. So I had to ultimately kind of already change my mind. And then I felt passionate about the issue. I thought, I really think the church needs to change on this because we're just shooting ourselves in the foot. Not only are we hurting a lot of people, but we're also really harming the witness of the church to my generation because people feel like the message of Jesus is one of. Marginalization, bullying, persecution of gay people. That was like, that's not the message of Jesus I was raised with. That's not the, and this to me just seems so topsy-turvy. So anyway, I ultimately had to change my mind about that and began to feel passionately about it before I could ever even ask myself the question about whether or not I might be gay. I think it would have been too psychologically and spiritually disorienting to me to reckon with that if I still felt like, if I was still a lot more uncertain in how I was thinking about the topic itself. So when I then was willing to ask myself that, I wasn't happy about the answer to that question, but it didn't make me doubt my relationship with God or my standing before God or anything like that. And that helped a lot too, because then I would have to try to unravel, okay, so why am I so unhappy about this? And I decided ultimately it was because it was going to make my life a lot harder, and not really because the thing in and of itself was a bad thing. So yeah, it was helpful to have done it in discrete steps. So this actually kind of leads into what we want to talk about today. And it's the article that you wrote in the New York Times that got just a little bit of attention with the title, I'm gay, not queer. It matters. Obviously, that was chosen by the Times, so it's not what you chose. Nevertheless, you got a lot of controversy for the article. And I think my first question is, what led you to write the article? What did you observe going on that you felt that you needed to write this? That's a good question. I have observed for a number of years now, I feel like there was a strange thing that happened after marriage equality was legalized in 2015, which to me was a wonderful thing, which I remain very grateful for. I was able to marry my husband four years ago at a church in Texas, which we wouldn't have been able to do without the Supreme Court ruling. And so to me, marriage equality and same-sex marriage was fundamentally about, allowing gay people to be included as equals in society. And allowing us to have our relationships be treated with the equal dignity and respect that they deserve. So for me, it's the idea of gay rights, LGBT rights in general, is about trying to remove forms of discrimination that prevent people from being able to be full and equal participants in life, church, and society. That's my understanding. That's why I was supportive of same-sex marriage, why I remain supportive of same-sex marriage, very much so. But after 2015, a different school of thought that had been much more marginal before, so much so that I had barely noticed it, began to become much more assertive. And that was this idea that actually... As some people would put it, maybe same-sex marriage was the wrong priority. They wouldn't necessarily say it was bad. I mean, a few fringe people would, but for the most part, they would say, well, that was really the wrong priority because that's a little too bourgeois. It's a little too domesticated. It's a little too integrated into society. And really, what we should be about is, and this would come along with saying that gay identity should really be a gateway into a queer approach to life and the world. That all that being gay is, is just being attracted to the same sex. But that, and this came up a lot when Pete Buttigieg was running for president in 2020. 2020. And obviously, I would think this would be obvious. I, feel like I have a fair amount in common with him in terms of how we think about, our sexual orientation, that, obviously it's important, but it's not the defining aspect of who we are. And we still want to, we want to be able to overcome discrimination based on that in order then to live a life that doesn't, that, you know, that's be able to have a marriage, family, faith, all of these things. And so I was not thrilled about a lot of the animosity that came at him for basically people who thought that he was gay but not queer. And so it's funny, too. I didn't choose the title of the article. I don't find the title of the article offensive. I think it's very straightforward and neutral. Of course, it's all a matter of how people interpret it. So if people interpret it differently, I'm happy to have a conversation to help them understand where I'm coming from. The gay, not queer, I've seen some people say, oh, well, the problem with the article's title was that gay, not queer has become a slogan in certain corners of social media for people who, for gay people who don't like trans people or don't want to be associated with trans people or that sort of thing. I thought, well, no, gay, not queer was an insult. So I'm actually reclaiming it, ironically. Like, the way I saw gay, not queer overwhelmingly was from people accusing people like me or people like Pete Buttigieg that, like, we are bad because we are gay but not queer. And ultimately although I don't think we're bad because of this I agree that there is a distinction and I do not think that being gay should require me to have a particular world view, that I would not be required to have if I were not gay. I do not think that being gay should require me to have a queer attitude toward the world and this concept of queerness even though for some people, the term is just kind of a general umbrella label for non-straight. And there are, you know, as with any word, there's going to be all kinds of feelings. And some people like it for any number of reasons. Some people dislike it for any other reason. So if some people like it, that's great. I have no issue with that. If people prefer the term for themselves, happy to support people who prefer that term for themselves. The challenge with it, though, is there's kind of this. There's this two-step to the way that some people talk about it. They'll say, oh, all it means, all queer means is non-heterosexual. And so by definition, if you're gay, you're queer. And if you're denying that, you're like a square denying you're also a rectangle. And so they make it sound almost totally neutral in any ideological content. Oh, it's just purely definitional. And because you're not straight, it's just part of the definition. And so they get people to accept it as a label by just saying, well, I guess it's just, it's just, that's all it is. But then the moment you accept it, they come along and say, actually, it also comes with a lot of ideological expectations and requirements. And it's not just about non-straight, it's also rooted in this concept of anti-normativity. And so this obviously has received its fullest development in the academic field of queer theory, which formally began in the early 1990s. And in queer theory, queer does not just mean non-heterosexual. It means anything that is against the norm. Anything that is anti-normative is queer. And there was a book, I actually have it over there, that's by Michael Warner in the late 1990s called The Trouble with Normal. And this was a queer critique of the concept of and the push for same-sex marriage. And he was concerned that legalizing same-sex marriage would encourage gay people to live more ordinary-seeming lives of monogamy, of commitment, And instead of allowing their gay orientation to instead encourage them to try to subvert social norms about sexuality more broadly. And I just fundamentally object to this idea that being gay should limit your freedom to think for yourself. I think it's a deeply homophobic idea. And it's often framed as, oh, the more progressive way of being gay. But it's actually profoundly regressive because it is saying that as a gay person, you do not have autonomy in the way that a heterosexual person has autonomy. You do not have agency in the way that a straight person has agency. Instead, you have been enlisted into an ideology and a way of seeing the world. And if you don't accept that, we will bully, ostracize, and shame you for not accepting it. And I don't accept it. So I've never been a fan of the queer ideology. I think for me... The question was, well, how much is that part of the package deal of the queer umbrella label? And so for a period of time in the late 2010s, I was trying to accept the umbrella label. I was never going to go around saying I'm queer because the word just, I also don't like the lack of specificity of it. Like when I say I'm gay, it means a specific thing. It means I'm exclusively attracted to the same sex. And that's really important, not for my core identity. It's in no way my core identity, but it's really important for helping the church, understand why this isn't a trivial issue. Why this isn't just something of, well, I just want a relationship that's going to feel a little edgier. No, that's not what it's about. I want a relationship that, in the same way that my parents have, a relationship, right, I want a relationship that is reflecting all of these basic Christian values and principles about marriage, of lifelong commitment and fidelity and self-giving and sacrifice. And for me, that is going to be a same-sex relationship because I am exclusively attracted to the same sex. So for me, identifying as gay is really quite important to communicate that reality and that experience. And so that's why I would never, I never would go around saying I'm queer because I just thought, well, I don't even know what that means. It could mean anything. I remember there was Somebody I know Or several people I know Who Were in heterosexual relationships. Were married to the opposite sex Who in the mid-2010s Started to identify as queer And they wouldn't explain What they meant by it I said, oh, do you mean you're bi? And they wouldn't explain. And they said, part of the value of this word for me is that it's mysterious. It's ambiguous. I said, well, if you're bi, that's fine. Like, bi people could be married to someone of the opposite sex, someone of the same sex. That's fine. Do you mean you're? They wouldn't say. And so I kind of thought with a couple people, you're not bi. You're straight. But it sounds edgier and more interesting to be able to say that you're queer. And that is not to say that that is necessarily why most people who like the word identify with it but it's open to that possible like use like it is open to being, embraced by almost anyone and this is part of what you find in queer theory too is a lot of the queer theorists, seem pretty excited about this idea that queer can't be defined that it can't be contained or constrained and that really anyone can use it for anything. And I mean, David Halperin in his book, St. Foucault, he's a prominent queer theorist and he's truly a brilliant, brilliant classicist. I absolutely love his work on Greek same-sex sexuality because as a historian, as a classicist, he is really first rate. When it comes, however, to his work on queer theory, that's where I read I'm like, okay, well, we're doing something different here. We're really not seeing things the same way anymore at this point. So he's a very smart guy, but he has a very different worldview than I do overall. And in his book, Saint Foucault, which already the title there is going to indicate some of our differences in worldview, I think that Michel Foucault was a terrible human being. Now, I will acknowledge that Michel Foucault was also a brilliant, man, unusually, uniquely brilliant, and that he made profoundly important intellectual contributions. Some of which were also bad. I think there were a real mix to his intellectual contributions. I will, I mean, if you want to talk about Foucault, I could talk about Foucault for a long time. I mean, his history of sexuality gets at some truly important and correct ideas and mixes in with that some very dark, dangerous, and incorrect ideas. So the problem that I have with a lot of, progressive academia when it comes to these topics is that Foucault is treated as a kind of demigod with this reverence that in no way does he deserve, despite acknowledging his brilliance and, his singular intellectual impact in this field. This was a man who, in his history of sexuality. Is so focused on, and this is one of my issues with postmodernism in general, it's not that there can't be genuinely, important and interesting insights that come up through the work of postmodern theorists, because there can be, and there are to some degree. The problem is that they often don't know when to stop. And they, Foucault embodies this better than anyone, in that, he is so suspicious. I mean, he's paranoid of power. And that is kind of the dominant theme running through all of his works, is this idea that authority and power, are intrinsically—and it's funny, because there's a Christian way of thinking about this that could have some rhymes and some overlaps with what he's saying, but it can't go in all the same directions. As Christians, this whole concept, whether people embrace the Augustinian vision of original sin or just a more general notion of the sinfulness of all humanity, Christians should have a suspicion toward power to a certain extent, in the sense that we should have a suspicion toward ourselves. We should have a suspicion toward our own propensity toward self-interest, toward putting ourselves above others. So I guess the Christian suspicion toward power is actually. A more complete suspicion than Foucault's. Because Foucault's, as happens so commonly with the postmodernists, it is a suspicion toward the power of other people. It is not then directed inward and a suspicion of oneself's own proclivities toward self-glorification, toward all the kinds of, you know, the, what is that famous phrase of Martin Luther's? That I forget now. What the original is versus how it gets translated, but kind of the turning inward, the bending inward. In gravata, say. Thank you. Thank you. So that type of concept. So there is a shared... Suspicion of power is not a bad thing, but Foucault does two things with it that are bad. One is that he isn't just suspicious of power, it's that he believes that all power structures, that there can't be anything good in them, that they fundamentally all need to be deconstructed. It's not that we should be suspicious of the ways that they can go wrong. It's that we treat them as intrinsically corrupt to the core in a way that can only be remediated through complete deconstruction. But, and this is the sinister part, he doesn't apply the same analysis to himself or to any group that is deemed the oppressed or marginalized group. And while I don't deny that oppression and marginalization are very real things, it is dangerous when we take this view that is so common in hyper-progressive ways of thinking about social justice today, which is that. The marginalized group basically can do no wrong. It's not just like we're recognizing important power differentials. And as Christians, we should. They're very real. But that power differentials then erase any moral agency on the part of those with the short end of the stick. And as a Christian, I don't agree with that. I don't agree that being marginalized means that you have a free pass to treat people in the majority group however you want. Because even if they are actively persecuting and oppressing you, no, you do not have a free pass to treat them however you want. Nothing, little disturbs me more in our culture than the celebration of Luigi Mangione. Yes. And the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And I am, they're just profound. they are the same phenomenon, really, in this idea. But what's so interesting, they get at different things. No one knew who Brian Thompson was, okay? Like, this was not a famous man. With Charlie Kirk, obviously, people knew who he was, and he was a deeply polarizing figure. And so, of course, plenty of people, you know, were kind of predisposed, already strongly disliked him. And I'm not going to pretend to have been a fan. I was not. But that's beside the point. This is not about whether you like someone or not. This is not about whether you like the health insurance industry or not. I'm happy to accept so many very strong critiques of the health insurance industry. But to say that it is justified to murder in cold blood someone just because he is a wealthy, powerful CEO in an industry that has a lot of deep moral problems. That's terrifying to me. I mean, it's like a civilizational issue because if you accept that way of thinking, you're not going to maintain, a civil society. You can't. You can't. And if you accept that way of thinking, even in issues where you might share some sympathy with some underlying critique, set aside the whole question of violence, no sympathy with that at all, But you might have some sympathy with the critique of a particular system, right, over a particular person. You might agree that a person is, in fact, quite harmful or damaging. If agreement with that could justify violence, but you're just saying the principle justifies violence and there's going to be, everyone is going to have a different perspective about who is harmful and who is damaging. And everyone is going to think someone else is very dangerous and damaging and harmful. And so if you've legitimized murder on the basis of, well, we really believe this person is really bad, then you've legitimized the murder of anyone by anyone. I mean, so sure, you know, the healthcare CEO, Charlie Kirk, were much more high-profile figures, but really the logic behind this doesn't limit itself to high-profile figures. So to see people on the—it also is just a reminder to me of how important Christianity is. And I think what we're losing when Christianity is in decline. I think there's been this idea among a lot of secular progressives that we're not losing much when Christianity is in decline, that in fact, it's a benefit because I will not deny that the American Christian church is far from the pure ideal of the way of Jesus. OK, like there are plenty, plenty of things in it that I would have strong critiques of that I do have strong critiques of. There are plenty of groups and people who have been seriously harmed by the church, especially in the United States. And so, yeah, I can understand why people who think about gay people in particular as one of many groups. right? They're like, oh my goodness, if this group that has been one of our active oppressors is then going to lose influence in society, well, it all seems that sounds like a good thing. Well, I just think that. As we're seeing these developments take further root, it becomes more clear, sure, yes, there have been problems and corruptions in the church, no question, and those should be addressed and reformed. That's what I'm all about. But to lose the worldview, that kind of ideological superstructure of, Christian ethics that became second nature to a lot of people who weren't even strongly Christian, who didn't even realize that that was a part of their way of seeing the world, that we would just all take for granted that, of course, murder is wrong. And now we don't. Most of us do. But now it's genuinely controversial in certain very ultra-progressive circles to say that if the person who was murdered was someone people hated. I mean, I did a, I wrote on Facebook after Charlie Kirk was murdered, just saying, first of all, acknowledging that I disagreed with him on a lot of things. A lot of things. So I was not in any way trying to, you know. Valorize his career or rhetoric or, you know, that sort of thing, because I had, quite significant disagreements with him. But when someone is murdered for their speech, no matter how much I agree or disagree with their speech, that to me is not the time to say, here's why I didn't like them. It just doesn't feel appropriate. Unless, at a minimum, you start with a very strong statement about why that's never okay to murder someone. But for me, it wasn't just that he was killed, as horrific as that was, it was the people celebrating it. I think that was actually more upsetting to me because there will be evil people who do evil things, and that is horrible. But it almost feels like, oh, we're letting something really dangerous. Out of containment if when this evil thing happens, we start to treat it as debatable of whether or not it's evil. And so for me, it was more the people who I know or knew, like, who were either cheering it on to some degree or at least just kind of saying, well, he kind of got what was coming. No no this is a really really grim and, fundamentally immoral way of viewing the world so i yeah i just, wrote a post on facebook back then just saying discreet with him on a lot of things and this is evil like murdering him is evil and celebrating it is evil it is evil and. The amount of pushback that I got for saying that was just a reminder to me of, frankly, why I think Christianity is so important. Why I think it is far too precious to lose or to abandon simply because it has been grievously wrong on things that have had a tremendous impact on my life. So that's why I'm all about reform. I'm not about revolution. I think Christianity fundamentally, is true, like in a way that is also why you, it's not just an instrumental benefit to society, you know, that, oh, well, this is good for society, even if God isn't real, it's good for people to believe in God so that then they're less likely to, you know, no, it's not about an instrumental benefit primarily, although I think it also has that. I think it's ultimately because I do think that it's true. And so if this is true, then it's something you need to fight for, even if the church has gotten some important things wrong. And yeah so i'm just very anyway it was you know maybe a meandering answer here but i think christianity is, incredibly important because it is true and i think that we're seeing the cost of, of losing that and so that's why i also think as lgbt people and christians we're in a. A pretty actually valuable position to be able to help to make a positive change because we obviously know from our own experience that things aren't perfect, right? And so when people like us are willing to stick around and say, actually, no, we think this is true and really worth defending and worth remaining a part of, I think that can reach people who it would not reach without, the kind of symbolic, uh, awareness that, you know, we've, this is not a cost free thing for us to do. So anyway, Oh, that was all. Why did I write the article? I mean, I, I, and then I just got into Michel Foucault. Uh, but yes, this was, I wouldn't say this was my most linear answer I've ever given on a podcast. No, but I think it, it does speak to some of what But I think it provides a good background because one of the things that I find interesting about the difference between gay and queer, is really what is how this shapes itself in policy or in equality. Because the word gay, and I think about this in same-sex marriage, is that the fight was about... We are human. We have a regular life. My husband and I do regular things. We are not like the super gay couple. We're just normal people. He's a church musician. I'm a pastor. That's it. The thing with queer sometimes, and yet I think you're right. Some people just use queer because it's kind of an all-encompassing term. But I think with the ideological meaning behind it, it doesn't care as much about policy. It doesn't seem to care as much about whether people can legally marry or their right to work or things like that. It's almost as if it's more of an interest in, as you said earlier, about revolution and just tearing stuff down and not really understanding the implications, of that and of the work that a lot of people did that was trying we're trying to bring about equality and just to say we're people we're we're like you um. And to try to find those bridges instead of kind of creating these chasms, yeah so i think that's yeah for me basically i i tried for a few years in late 2010s to see well maybe queer can work as an umbrella label even though i don't love it because i at least see the value in having one word as opposed to this acronym that keeps growing every year yeah and that no one can decide what the right version of it is and then no one can remember after it turns into eight or nine letters and numbers and symbols um, so i thought oh you know maybe that could work maybe this could be, a good catch-all term. But then seeing the degree to which the ideological element of it. Was present and how many people sought to enforce that quite rigidly. The first issue for me where it really was began to be a point of pressure was the issue of monogamy. I have always been very clear that I'm advocating for monogamous same-sex relationships. I think monogamy is very important. I think it's very important because I think that as Christians, we're called to honor God with how we live our lives and our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit. And that's why we should not be engaging in casual sex. We should not be having random anonymous hookups. And again, I want to be very gracious with people no matter where they're at, no matter, like, and especially with LGBT people who've been hurted or mistreated or rejected by the church. Like, I don't judge people at all for, like, you know, even if I think somebody, probably could benefit by structuring things in a different way, it's not like I'm going to look at anybody and be like, oh, tsk, tsk, tsk. But that doesn't mean that there still aren't real moral truths and values about, how we should be ordering our lives. And I think that, you know, hookup culture in general is just incompatible with the way that we're called to live as Christians, because our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. They are not, we are not the ultimate authority over our bodies. And that's kind of one other fundamental difference between a Christian worldview and a more secular progressive worldview, right? For a secular progressive worldview, all that matters ultimately is consent. And they might add a few other things that are very vague, just like honor, respect, care. But then you ask them, so can you do that with an anonymous hookup in a bathroom? Yeah, probably. Like, okay, well, then these words didn't accomplish much. Yeah, but the, yeah, from a Christian perspective, it's not just about do I consent to do this and does the other person consent to do this? It's, is this what my body was bought at a price for me to do? It's a very different way of thinking and it's going to lead to very different conclusions. And so that Christian perspective to me is saying, yes, we want gay people to be able to have Christ-like relationships. And to have a Christ-like relationship is to make a monogamous commitment to another person. It just is. And. So the way that then some people would try to push on this, well, what about a polythruple where they all make a lifelong commitment to one another? And I said, well, first of all, let me know when you find that. I don't think I've ever seen one. I mean, I haven't. I've seen like a couple, examples, but they're not closed triads. I've seen a couple examples of a thruple that was together for 20 years, but they're not even sexually exclusive within the triad. And every single throuple I've ever heard of, and I would love it if someone's found a different one, please. I want to know because I'm genuinely interested. But every throuple I've ever heard of started as a couple that then added another person. And so why is the throuple closed if the couple wasn't closed? Like, couldn't the throuple become a quad? Yeah. And also, let's be real, this is not the ethos behind any of the polyamory advocacy. If you try to go out there and be like, I support poly, but only lifelong committed exclusive throuples, you would have zero constituency for this argument. Even that argument, I can't get on board with the committed thruple hypothetical, even though I think it's basically just at the level of a hypothetical in a truly exclusive way that didn't start as a couple and then became a thruple that already wasn't actually exclusive, clearly by design. You would need three people who all are on Tinder at the same time and all meet up for dinner for the first time at the same time and all decide that everybody loves each other and they're all going to make a life. I mean, this is not, it's just, it's, it's, it's a bit, it's funny to think about because that would never happen. But, no, even that, I think there is, well, I would acknowledge that I think that would be better than having a revolving door forever. I think it still is not actually compatible with a Christian vision for marriage because a Christian vision for marriage is fundamentally about a complete self-gift between the spouses. And you can't have a complete self-gift if you're doing it to multiple people. There's an inherent division of the self-gift that is going to take place. And there's just the reality. I mean, think about what this means in practice. If your spouse is in the hospital having a major surgery, you know. You're going to be there for them. But what if your other spouse is in a different hospital having a different major surgery? Uh-oh. Well, you can't be there for both of them. You go back and forth. This is just a practical reality of time and life that you cannot make the same level of a commitment to two or three people simultaneously that you can make to one. And there's something about the exclusivity of the self-gift, about the exclusivity of the covenant that also mirrors God's exclusivity with his people in the Bible. I think that the prophets in particular, in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and Ezekiel, start to draw this connection. They're the ones who really first start to talk about marriage as a model for the relationship between God and Israel, and then this gets further developed theologically in the New Testament as a relationship of mirroring Christ and the church. But already in the Old Testament prophets, you start to see a connection that is drawn between monotheism and monogamy. In the same way that going and worshiping other gods, worshiping idols, is treated as the analogy is to adultery, to infidelity. And then you see this as well in the New Testament, this idea that God has this exclusive devotion to us as his people. And one way that we're, of course, we're supposed to model that by only. Worshiping him as our God and not other gods as well. And then marriage is able to be a kind of miniature version, a representation of God's relationship with us through, partly through its exclusivity, also through its permanence, also through the self-giving, right? It's not just, well, I married one person and now I'm going to, you know, be mean to you. No, also it's the way you treat that person every day. But it's partly through the fact that it's one person. The exclusivity has theological importance. It has practical importance. I think it also has tremendous social importance. I gave a talk last year called Why Monogamy Matters at the Reformation Project Conference about the social value of monogamy, both maritally and sexually within a marriage. I won't get into all of that. Now, all this to say, the push from some people and the push for non-monogamy tends to get framed as, well, it's an identity. And if some people identify as polyamorous, then how could you ever invalidate someone's identity? Well, I didn't sign up to validate everyone's identity. I'm fine with people being gay. I'm fine with people being bi. I'm fine with people being trans because I don't think that there is a moral problem with any of those things. I'm not fine with polyamory just because some people identify as polyamorous because I think there's a moral problem with it. That doesn't mean that I want to be unkind to anyone. Like obviously people, I want to live in a world where people have the freedom to structure their lives in ways that I disapprove of. Because my approval should not be the arbiter of what you have the freedom to do. But that does not mean that I think the church should be blessing or celebrating things that I think are fundamentally incompatible with the way that we're called to live as followers of Jesus. So there's, you know, the distinction there. So yeah, people should have the freedom to do all kinds of things that I think are a bad idea. But that does not mean that I'm in any way obligated to champion or celebrate causes that I have profound moral disagreements with. And so the queer... Umbrella label was quickly then turned into a also poly is queer, and you're queer and so if you don't support poly then it sounds like a person now poly if you need to support poly okay if they were if poly were just a person i would support her okay but polyamory different issue um, if you don't support polyamory then you're betraying your queerness at that point i was like well. Who decided that I have any queerness to betray? And they would say, well, because you're not normative, they're not normative. Non-normativity, anti-normativity is not of interest to me because that's just not a Christian way of seeing the world. Normativity is not inherently good and anti-normativity is not inherently good either. All norms from a Christian standpoint need to be evaluated through the person and teaching of Jesus, through the character of God as revealed in Scripture. And so some norms are bad and should be challenged, and other norms are good and should be embraced. And they should all be evaluated based on whether or not they are Christ-like fundamentally. So it's just like the idea that, well, yeah, to the extent that being gay was non-normative, okay, but evaluate that through the lens of Jesus, and there's nothing wrong with it, so therefore it should be accepted. All kinds of other things that might be against sexual norms like promiscuity, prostitution, pornography, polyamory, I think they're going to get different conclusions when you evaluate those through the person teachings of Jesus. So I feel no particular requirement to I must endorse all things that are not normative because being gay is not normative. And even then, what do we even mean? How are you using the word normal and normative and all of these things? And I also, I think it's a homophobic ideology because, it actually suggests that there's no possible reason, there's no good reason to support same-sex relationships unless you have no standards whatsoever. Unless you are a complete moral relativist, then you wouldn't support same-sex relationships. That's very homophobic, actually. So I am not on board with this ideology to the extent that it increasingly became a pressure point of people saying, well, we've forced this term upon you, and now that we've forced this term upon you, we're going to tell you how you need to think. And you kind of need to become a puppet. Of queerness as an ideology. And so for me, I wrote the article to say, almost as a declaration of independence, to say, no, I think for myself, I will come to my own conclusions. And my identity does not enlist me in an ideology. And gay people should all have the freedom to think for ourselves. And if some gay people want to reach much more radical conclusions, they should have the freedom to do so. And if some gay people want to reach more Christian conclusions, they should have the freedom to do so. Not just saying radical and Christian could never go together, they can, but I'm just saying in some of these particular ways, there's also going to be some differences sometimes. So that's, yes, that's why I wrote the article, because I also just think it's profoundly counterproductive to public acceptance and support, to create this fusion in the public mind between being gay, bi, or trans, and, Wanting to overturn every norm under the sun. And I think it has absolutely been a factor behind the decline in public support in recent years because that narrative has gained hold in part because a lot of ultra-progressive, LGBTQ activists have been promoting it and. Have tried to create strong disincentives against any gay people, vocally saying we don't agree with that. And part of this, And again, I'm perfectly happy with critique, disagreement, pushback. That's fine. What I take issue with is with this posture from some people that you're really not allowed to think what I think. You're not allowed to say what I said. And that if you do, you deserve to be, formally excommunicated from the group. And I was like, oh, are we a new religion now? Is being gay part of a religion? Because I didn't sign up for that. And I'm not interested in that. So I, yeah, I'm going to think for myself. And that does not mean that I don't support other people. This does not mean that I in any way want to undermine solidarity with people who are bi or people who are trans, because I don't. I think for myself in a way that causes me to support them and to want. Their welfare just as much as my own. But that's because I'm a Christian. And that's just how I think about things as a Christian. And that's why it's not just about sexuality. There are so many minority groups that I would feel the same kind of affinity and support for and solidarity with, whether it's on issues of race or disability or gender or nationality or immigration status, right? Like, to me, it's not just about sexual or gender normativity or anti-normativity. That's not my framework at all. I support trans people and I support bi people because I don't think there's anything morally wrong with it, first of all, and because I'm a Christian and I recognize that they are often, all too often, marginalized, mistreated, discriminated against, and I think that's wrong because I'm a Christian. And so that's why I support them. So the fact that I am saying I'm gay and I'm not queer is purely me saying I do not accept queer theory. I do not accept having this ideology put upon me to tell me who I must be, how I must think, and how I must see the world. I do not accept a lot of these anti-nordic conclusions. And no, I'm not going to be endorsing non-monogamous relationships. And while I think people should have the freedom to do it, I'm not going to be the advocate for that. And in fact, I will be a critic of it. And I should have the freedom to do that. And if people disagree with me, that's fine. But the disagreement, if they're upset with me, they should just be upset because they think I'm wrong. So let's have the argument and let's have the debate. Let's not just say your identity means you're only allowed to think a certain way. That's just not freedom. So I believe in freedom for everyone. And partly that also includes the freedom to be able to think for ourselves and not have to just kind of follow a party line because of our identity. I find it interesting that the people who talk a lot about the suspicions of power at times also use power to impose that on others. Gleefully, yes. Yeah. And I think especially with the whole gay not queer, there seems to be this almost imposition of this. And that if you don't accept it, then basically you're out of the treehouse. You don't belong. Absolutely. Oh, it does feel very much like a treehouse. It turns it into this social clique. And I'm not interested in that. That's just, also, being gay is not the most important part of my identity. And that's the other thing, too, is that the queer ideology wants to force that to be the most important part of your identity. Well, it's not. Being a Christian is the most important part of my identity. So i do think that ultimately christianity and queer theory, can't go together it doesn't mean that every conclusion will always be at odds that's not true i mean i'll agree with the queer theorists on certain conclusions because anytime that i think a norm is wrong they'll probably agree with me, because they're so you know skeptical of norms in general well unless it's a norm that they you know i mean they're not always as consistent as they would as they might think they are. But yes, there might be plenty of norms that I would think are wrong and that they would think are wrong. Great. We can find some agreement there. But as an actual, philosophy, queer theory is far too totalizing. It is far too, it asks far too much. If you really want to give it everything it's asking of you, after a while, it's going to deconstruct your Christianity and any Christian ethics right along with it. And, you know, I know some people who. What I find often, the most reasonable people who disagree with me about queer theory, or who like queer theory, or who see themselves as practitioners of it to some degree, the ones who I think are the most reasonable are the ones, who don't take it all the way. They kind of they take it half of the way and then they'll say at some point well like but they don't actually deconstruct every single norm with it, and they'll stop at a certain point and then go back to other sources of ethics, or go back to Christian frameworks or ethics at some point and, I appreciate that because that's good but to me that doesn't actually it's not actually a an advertisement for queer theory of, oh, look, well, this person likes it, and they haven't gone completely off the deep end. Well, yeah, but they're not really fully doing it. It's like they're doing it halfway. And if your framework, if you have to abandon your own framework at a certain point, is it a valuable framework? Maybe not. So it's not to say that I can't find some common ground with people who disagree with me about queer theory. But in general, to the extent I can find common, the more I can find more and more common ground with them to the extent that they're willing to stop at some point with it. And to me, that's just an invitation to say, okay, what is this really doing for us? I think that some people like it because it feels like a shortcut to. The subversion of norms where I might even agree with them that norm is a bad norm. But for me to get there might take a little bit longer because I am doing it a little more Chesterton's Fence style, you know, Chesterton's Fence, right? And I'm much more, I mean, even just like my book, my whole argument, I spent two years researching this topic before I even gave my first talk on the topic. I spent another two years writing the. I think this makes my argument a lot better, to be honest. I think my argument is so much more persuasive and effective because I put in all of this work, many years, trying to tease out the very best possible counter-arguments at every single step of the argument. I'm like, very systematic in my approach to this. Now, would I still have been right, in my opinion? but I've been right if I just said at the beginning, I just think this is wrong. I just think it's wrong to be against same-sex relationships. Yeah, I still think I would have come to the correct conclusion, but would I have been as effective in persuading other people to come to that conclusion? No. And would I even be able to have the same level of confidence in my position? No, actually. Because if you haven't really considered. I guess I just much prefer, I feel like queer theory and a lot of what you find in the world of critical theory in general, they try to tilt, they try to kind of adjust the playing field in their favor from the outset to say, well, if it's a norm, it's probably wrong. And so the burden of proof is much lower for them to establish their claims. I don't love that. Now, I'm not some radical traditionalist by any means who thinks that, oh, you know, you must spend 10 years establishing a claim before I might ever disagree with a traditional claim. That's not true. I mean, I'm certainly very open to critiques of traditions and norms, But, and it's not like you'll have to, like, you know, I don't need to spend 10 years studying the Greek and the Bible and the Hebrew before I'm going to decide that I think slavery is wrong, right? I just think it's wrong. I just do. But that doesn't mean I don't think there's value in someone else doing that. I hope other people do do that. That it's not going to be what I'm going to do because I only have so many years of my life. Unfortunately, that's not our live issue anymore. But yes, I just think that that's wrong. And so I think it's okay to come to some of those conclusions, even that are non-traditional conclusions, without a tremendous amount of thought behind it. But I would hope someone else is putting a tremendous amount of thought behind it so that I could, you know, if I ever am being challenged in a way where I don't know how to respond or answer, that there are resources there for me to draw on. But yeah, so it's not like I think that you, all this to say, I just don't agree. This is called the hermeneutic of suspicion. And I do not share hermeneutic of suspicion. This does not mean that I have a hermeneutic of assuming that everything is hunky dory all the time and that all existing norms and traditions are all wonderful. No, absolutely not. And it'd be hard for any gay person or any woman or any person of color or like, it'd be hard to sustain that unless you've never experienced any ways that traditions and norms can be harmful. But I just don't agree that therefore we should take the attitude that norms, we should start off with the assumption that norms are probably bad and wrong and they were probably put in place in order to oppress people. Yeah. Norms can be oppressive. They can also be profoundly liberating and beneficial. I mean, we fortunately live in a country where our norm has been having democratic elections. And some people in recent years have tried to queer this norm. I don't like that. I don't want that norm to be queered. Now, you didn't find very many people on January 6th saying we're here to queer. The norm, but that is what they were doing. Yeah, it was. You could ask the question, well, who does this norm of democratic elections really serve? Yeah, you could ask the question. But I think overall, it's much better norm than almost all alternatives. So it's not to say it's perfect. It's not to say that our democracy has ever been perfect, because it hasn't been. But wouldn't it be much better? I think it's much better to say, hey, what are the ways we still need to improve? What are the ways that we still need to live ever more fully into our guiding ideals and values than to say, well, the democracy has to be perfect. problems. So, you know, maybe this whole system is rotten to the core. I also think people are incredibly naive in their assumption that what will replace the status quo will be better. It's like this idea that, oh, America is so evil and rotten to the core. Okay, so you want to abolish it and you just assume you're going to get your, ultra-progressive utopia where all of your values are represented. What you're much more likely to get is something much, much worse. And that's partly just from a Christian realism, almost an anthropological realism that you find in Christianity, of a recognition that humans are not. All good. We are a profound mixture of good and bad. And that is why the, I mean, I remember when I first learned what communism was in ninth grade, all I had heard before was it was really, really bad. And then our teacher told us what it was. And I was like, but that sounds so nice. Like they just want everybody to share and they want everybody to have equal access and equal resources. Like, I thought this was evil, but it sounds really lovely. Well, it does sound lovely. Unfortunately, it also is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature. Communism, I think, could work beautifully in the new heavens and the new earth. Like, once we've moved past the problem of sin, maybe communism could be great. Because it can work pretty well in healthy, functional families. But given that we are still on this side of glory, given that we still have the profound problem of human sinfulness, that is why communism's Achilles' heel is its utopianism. And it's a little bit sad in one sense that utopianism is a problem because it is so kind of nice. But Christianity to me has, Christianity is a utopian religion in an eschatological sense, right? Like, you can't ask for a more utopian vision than Christian eschatology provides. But Christianity is fundamentally non-utopian when it comes to its assessment of the here and now and human nature. And I think that is actually the perfect balance that you need. Because if you lack the eschatological knowledge, idealism and utopianism of Christianity, you're much more likely to just want to reify harmful hierarchies and traditional structures and just say, well, you know, it's a man's world, and it's a white man's world, and it's a straight person's world, and this is just the, this is. Social Darwinianism at work, right? If you are poor, physically weak, frail, disabled, gay, a woman, you didn't get, you know, you got the short stick in life. And this is just the way of life. You know, nobody is crying. Nobody is shedding too many tears because the lion ate, you know, the rabbit. It's the circle of life. That's like, this is just how it goes. And for a very long time, I think that's how most people saw human hierarchies as well, right? Is that this is just we are no different than the other species. There's really nothing that tragic about slavery unless you're the slave. But it doesn't make it morally wrong as people would see it. And so I think part of the Christianity, in some ways, it's this perfect balance between that, way of seeing the world and kind of the communist or Marxist vision of the world, which is trying to solve a lot of the injustices of whatever you might, I don't even know what the right term for that would be. If that's more the Nietzschean view of the world. But so the problem with the Nietzschean view of the world is that it doesn't acknowledge that a lot of these things actually do need to change and are wrong. But the problem with the utopian Marxist view of the world is that it thinks we can make the change happen right now without recognizing that. You can't have the Christian eschatological vision forced without also having the redemption of people's hearts, the reward people's hearts right so you need the christian moral formation as part of the process and so that's where the like yes we should be working toward that we should not be accepting any harmful oppressive status quos and, We still need to be sensitive to the realty and the failings inherent in every person, including people in marginalized groups, as we are doing that. So we don't just end up inverting hierarchies and having new inverted forms. Of oppression. So, yeah, anyway, as you can tell, I like Christianity. It's kind of my thing. Well, and I think, you know, actually this leads to kind of a final question is, what are your hopes for this article? Because obviously it got a lot of attention, lots of pushback, but what are your hopes? What do you hope that this can bring to the wider discussion, especially when it comes to LGBTQ rights and the community as a whole? Yeah, I'd say my hopes for the article are not that different than my hopes from this original book that I wrote in a different way. So when I first published God and the Gay Christian in 2014, I knew I was not going to change everybody's minds right away. That's obvious. What I wanted to do was establish in a very visible way that this position exists, and that you can hold this position while also continuing to believe in the authority of the Bible and Orthodox Christian theology. It doesn't mean everyone's going to agree with me. It means that there needs to be an understanding and a recognition that this position exists. Because as long as you were able to—and what would happen in conservative Christian communities is anybody who becomes affirming is just totally iced out. And so you're able to have this hermetically sealed kind of. Group think almost where people don't even know like, anybody who feels this way is just erased and so they're no longer part of the group and then you don't even have to debate you don't have to, engage opposing arguments because you've created a system where no one is even allowed to say or think such things and so a huge part of what i've been attempting to do so far yes ultimately I do want to persuade people, but is to say, whether you agree or not, this argument exists and the argument cannot be erased. And so I feel the same way with the article. I know I was not going to persuade everybody with one article, but it's more saying this position exists and we are here. We are not queer. And I wouldn't say get used to it because that sounds a little harsh, But maybe we need to make room for that. That's the nicer way of saying it. But that there has been such a push to make it impossible for any gay person to say that, to say I am gay, but I do not accept the queer identity label for myself, not rejecting it for other people. I do not accept it for myself. And some of the backlash kind of, in my opinion, confirms the thesis in that, And again, people who just disagree, that's totally fine. But there were other people who basically said, he must be excommunicated. He must be cast out. He must be erased. And my thought is, that's my point. Like, that is exactly why I wrote this article, because that is wrong. Like, no. Even if I'm wrong in all of my analysis about all of this, it is not okay to take that posture toward such a mainstream opinion. This is not a fringe opinion among gay people. Like half, based on the poll that I cited in the article, like 48% of LGBTQ people identify with the word queer in 2025. That's not a majority. So I think it was 42, 44 percent, something like that, that actively didn't identify any other that were maybe uncertain or something. But it's a good half of the broader LGBT community that does not identify with the word queer. And there has been a huge imbalance in who is allowed to say what we think. Like, if you like the word queer for yourself, first of all, that's totally fine. If you want to impose the word queer on everybody else, you are free to do that with very little, like, overall quite little pushback. If you just want to say, I do not accept this word for myself, prepare for, you know, prepare for all kinds of backlash and problems. So it creates a distorted... Perception for a lot of people. I know plenty of straight people who have felt that they should be calling us all queer because they've had a lot of people vocally saying they need to, and people who feel the way I do, haven't been speaking up as much because we're going to be punished for it. And, so I just feel like this isn't right. It's actually a distortion of even the reality of this group and what opinions actually are within our own group. And it's on principle wrong to force worldviews and ideologies on people who. Haven't consented to them and don't agree with them. So that's the main thing is I wanted to very visibly say, yes, many of us are here and are not queer. And we need to actually have the discussion. And we need to have it more openly. And I do, I am encouraged, honestly. I mean, it's amazing. It's been over two months and still I see new podcasts, videos, articles coming out still about it. And I think that's what we need. I think, you know, it's not just because people thought, oh, what a wonderful writer, right? I mean, but it's because this is, it's been a huge issue. I think there's been so many people, there's been such a pent-up desire to be able to talk about it. And so to have the Times publish this, I think it's really quite consequential, for this discourse in general. So I'm grateful to be able to have played a role in contributing to that, but I certainly know it was not me alone. If I had just written this on my sub stack, it not have had the same reach by any measure. No, and I think it is important to kind of force the issue in that way because. You know, obviously you're not the only one that that thinks this way. There are lots of people from all walks of life that think this way. And I think we haven't really been able to say anything. And that it's not a right wing way of thinking. Exactly. That's the other thing that it is true. I mean, yes, you can find some people. I find there are some people I've seen on X who will use the hashtag of gay not queer or something. And sometimes I find these people quite off putting it annoying. And sometimes like, wow, you really do seem to have a big problem with trans people. And the way you talk about it is demeaning. And I don't like that. You know, I'm not OK with that. And so I guess if that's all people had seen from people who were saying they were gay but not queer, it might create a perception. It's this really fringe thing of just people who are quite right wing. I'm not right wing. I have never been. And that and my entire and I'm also not just happen to be gay. This has been my entire life's work, is advocating for the acceptance not just of gay people, but also of bi people, also of trans people, in the most difficult terrain within the United States to do this, which is the conservative church. So this is not a, yeah, I think it helps a lot. First of all, the New York Times, obviously, it's not a right-wing paper, despite what I've heard some say it's not. And I am not a right-wing person And I also am very This is a cause that is deeply Important to me So. I think those things also help to scramble some of the perceptions around who is allowed to think this way without necessarily being categorized in, you know, in certain ways that can then, oh, well, if it's only, you know, this one particular fringe group, it's like, no, it's really not. You can find people all across the political and ideological spectrum who feel very similarly. I know plenty of trans people. I've heard from plenty of trans people who are like, thank you. I completely agree with you. They feel the same way that I do about this. This is not about gay versus trans. And it's not about gay versus queer people. It is not at all about versus people who identify with the word queer. It is about saying we shouldn't all have to use a certain word, especially when it can come freighted with so much ideological baggage. But it's not about trying to pit any letter against other letters. It's not about trying to pit the group against one another. It's actually about trying to have a more authentic solidarity with one another, which you can only have when you allow people to think freely and to express themselves freely. And we are not trying to kind of use puppet strings to tell everybody what they need to think. So in that sense, yeah, I think that it was perhaps a topic unusually suited to a large response because of how much of a pent up desire there has been amongst so many people to be able to discuss it. And so for that, I am very grateful. Matthew, thank you for taking the time to chat today. Before you go, if people want to know more, especially about you and your ministry, where should they go? Well let's see they could my organization is the reformation project you can go to reformationproject.org uh to learn more about that or follow us on social media uh my personal site is matthewbines.com you can follow me on social media i i'm not a content creator i don't post that, often i don't know how people do i really either i mean i i've thought I started a Substack last year. I post on it very occasionally. But I've thought, oh, I should write a post about this and this and this. And then three months pass. I was like, I don't know how people do it. But I'm not trying to do it. So I'm not a content creator. So, you know, you're not going to get that much by following me. You'll see when every few months I occasionally post something. But that's the only pace that I can find manageable. So. I totally concur with you. So, all right. Well, Dennis, so nice to meet you. It was great to meet you, too. So, thank you. And, again, thanks for taking the time. Absolutely. This was great. What are your thoughts on this? It is a controversial subject, and I'm curious to hear your ideas and thoughts. If so, if you have some ideas and thoughts, please send them to me at dennis at churchandmain, and that is all one word, dot org. I will include links to Matthew's website, the article in question in the New York Times, and also to his Substack. And he has actually a follow-up to that article that you may want to read as well. I really liked, and I'm being honest here, I thought that both the article in the New York Times and the one following on the substack were I tended to agree with. But I also know that other people have differing opinions. And that is part of being part of the LGBTQ community. There are many different opinions. But I would love to hear what you're thinking. And as I said, whether or not you agree with me, it doesn't matter. But you can send that to dsanders, I'm sorry, at dennis at churchinmain.org. So that's dennis at churchinmain.org. As usual, if you want to learn more about this podcast, listen to past episodes, or donate, check me out, churchinmain.org. You can also visit churchinmaine.substack.com to read related articles. Subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app, and please consider leaving a rating or review because it helps others find the podcast. So that is it for this episode of Church in Maine. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Thank you so much for listening. Take care, everyone. Godspeed, and I will see you very soon.