EDIT: We are live here!
On the final day of Pride month, the New York Times published Matthew Vines’ latest work pushing for a rejection of all things “queer.” It’s titled, “I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters.” If you already have context for that, just know that Billie Hoard and I will be doing a reaction livestream on Thursday, July 2nd, at 2PM Eastern, 11AM Pacific, and we’d love for you to join! You’ll be able to watch the Livestream on my YouTube Channel. (I’ll try to remember to update that link with the specific link once we’re live).
If you don’t know what’s going on, here’s the short version.
Who is Matthew Vines
Vines is the author of “God and the Gay Christian,” and is a gay Christian himself. He is also founder of The Reformation Project, an organization with the goal of encouraging inclusion of gay people in the Christian church.
What’s his recent public work focused on?
Over the last couple years, Vines has focused on pushing back on what he refers to as “Queer Theology” and “Queer Theory.” We’ll talk more about this in the livestream, but Vines effectively believes that the only real problem with traditional conservative Christian views on sexuality and marriage was that gay people were excluded from it. He is against premarital sex, polyamory, and much of what he believes is included in the word “queer.”
To say it clearly, I disagree with both his conclusion and how he arrives at it, and Billie has written an extensive rebuttal to his article last year, “The Paradox of Pride.”
What’s the latest article?
His latest article mostly covers the same ground, but it does so in one of the most public forums in the world: The New York Times. Due to this, Billie and I wanted to respond publicly. We’ll read through the entire article, responding as we go. We might also take a look at some of the comments and other reactions we’ve seen.
Feel free to drop a question below if you’d like us to talk about anything in particular!
Who are you and Billie? Why talk about this?
Billie and I are both transgender, lesbian women who are also Christian1. I’m polyamorous. We both embrace the label “queer”, and strongly push for a fully liberationist approach to queer rights and inclusion. That’s in contrast to Vines’ approach, and we wanted to discuss the differences and where we disagree with Vines. To be clear, we are saddened by Vines’ approach and hope he will reconsider.
We hope you can join us live, or watch the livestream recording once it’s done!
-Celeste
I typically go with “Christian-ish” for myself, with many caveats that it’s quite complicated for me.
Yay!!!