Alex Reimer July 1, 2026 (Queerty.com)
On the last day of Pride Month, the New York Times published an op-ed that argues gay people need to whitewash their existences for the comfort of conservative Christians.
Thanks for the offer, but we’re gonna have to decline.
The writer, Matthew Vines, declares that he’s “gay, not queer,” and that “it matters.” The author of a book called God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships, Vines grew up in a regressive evangelical church in Wichita, Kansas. Now an adult, it’s apparent he still harbors self-shame and resentment.
Like many conservative gay men–and they are almost always men–Vines blames eroding support for same-sex marriage on the LGBTQ+ movement’s alleged excesses. In particular, he fixates on the word “queer.” Vines says “gay” and “queer” are not interchangeable, despite “progressive activists,” organizations and media outlets like this one using “queer” as an umbrella term.
“The broader trend of casting the queer net ever wider has muddled a once-clear public message about who gay people are,” he writes. “Being gay begins to look less like an inborn trait and more like a chosen ideology or aesthetic.”
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Though Vines prattles on for 1,269 words, his argument can be boiled down to this simplistic thesis: “if we stop calling ourselves queer, then homophobes will like us.”
The problem is, the conservative Christians Vines so desperately wants to win over have never accepted gay people as we are. They came to tolerate a sanitized, hetero-normalized version of queerness that doesn’t challenge their views.
Andrew Sullivan’s conservative case for gay marriage lays out this very point. He says that marriage is a traditional institution, and promotes monogamy opposed to promiscuity. Last Pride season, Sullivan wrote an essay in the Times blaming a “radicalized gay rights movement” for the resurgence in anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments. He claims that advocacy orgs conjured up the issue of gender identity to pad their coffers in the wake of Obergefell. “This huge increase in funding was no longer primarily about gay, lesbian and transgender civil rights,” he writes, “because almost all had already been won.”
Much like Sullivan, Vines seems to believe that marriage equality should represent the end point of the gay rights movement. He refers to marriage as a “core biblical idea” that reflects “God’s self-giving love for humanity through the sacrificial love of spouses for each other.”
While that may be Vines’ idea of marriage, it is a narrow definition. He leaves no room for non-monogamous relationships, or any arrangement that doesn’t embody the 1950s nuclear family ideal.
When recounting his coming out story, Vines says he found great comfort in the idea that there’s “nothing inherently radical or subversive about being gay.” He fails to mention who cleared the way for him to feel so inoffensive: radical queer and trans activists who confronted the country’s indifference towards AIDS.
Due to its adversarial roots, Vines allows that it was appropriate for activists to use the word “queer” during the AIDS epidemic. With the AIDS crisis over, he says the term’s “us-versus-them” nature no longer applies.
Through the entire op-ed, Vines’ privilege shines through. The AIDS crisis may be over for him, and other upscale white men with access to affirming healthcare. But HIV rates for Black and brown men remain disproportionally high, and the Tr*mp admin continues to scale back funding for HIV research.
For Vines, who married his husband at a Baptist church in Texas, the struggle for gay rights is over. Now, he doesn’t want to disrupt the status quo.
In doing so, he ignores all of the LGBTQ+ people who don’t enjoy that luxury.
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Alex Reimer is an Assistant Editor at Queerty who writes about sports and fitness, politics and irreverent gay things. In a previous life, he was a talk radio loudmouth in Boston. He currently lives in Chicago.