"Gay" and "queer" are increasingly used interchangeably in progressive discourse. But the two words don't mean the same thing. And in that difference lies a danger for our hard-fought equality. My essay in today's New York Times: nytimes.com/2026/06/30/opini…

This is among the more common critical responses I've received since last week: the people who are committed to hating you no matter what will still hate you regardless of what language you use or whether you advocate for integration into society or subversion of it. That is true, but trivially so, because fortunately, the great majority of people are not committed to hating gay people no matter what. The world cannot be neatly divided into people who seek our destruction and people who will applaud no matter what we say or do—and in fact, almost everyone exists somewhere in between those extremes. So no, I have no illusions that reclaiming a message focused on shared values and common humanity will magically eliminate all ill will toward gay people in the world. But I do think it will make a significant difference for the large number of people who do not want to persecute gay people but who also are understandably alienated by radical, us-vs.-them approaches to LGBTQ activism that have become far too common in recent years.

This feels significant: @WNYC (the main NPR member station in New York City) ran a 12-minute segment today about the word "queer." The title was "Why Do You Identify As Queer?", but @BrianLehrer spent the first half of the segment reading excerpts from my NYT essay to give listeners my perspective (without framing it as problematic): wnyc.org/browse/shows/episod…. He then invited calls from listeners who do embrace "queer" for themselves to share why they like the word. Which is fine by me! I have no interest in shutting anyone else down or preventing anyone from using their term of choice. I just want the 52% of gay, bisexual, and transgender people who do not identify with "queer" to have a voice, too. A week ago, it would've been hard to imagine a major NPR member station giving equal time to both views on this topic. I hope this is a sign of where things are headed.

Why imposing the "queer" label on all gay people limits our freedom rather than expands it (from the comments section on my New York Times essay): nytimes.com/2026/06/30/opini…

I'm in print in The New York Times today: "I'm Gay, Not Queer. It Matters." So many gay (and bisexual and transgender) people agree with me, but we have felt it nearly impossible to speak up without being shouted down. But the tides are now starting to turn. I'm very grateful.

This is absolutely vile.

I enjoyed joining Pete and Jared at @theB4NP for a conversation about the Bible, same-sex marriage, and what's new in the updated edition of God and the Gay Christian. You can watch it here: youtube.com/watch?app=deskto…

I have plenty of critiques of contemporary LGBTQ activism, but this post is incredibly dishonest. The clip here is from a TEDx talk a random German medical student, Mirjam Heine, gave in 2018. Heine has no known connection to "the LGBTQ+ movement;" Lila has fabricated that claim from whole cloth. Heine's talk was dangerously naive and wrong—pedophilia is in no sense a sexual orientation and should emphatically not be viewed as such—but she wasn't arguing for acceptance of any acts between adults and minors, thankfully. She emphasized that acting on attraction to children would be a "disaster" and "wrong without any doubt." That doesn't mean her talk wasn't dangerous: She still deserved fierce pushback for her profoundly misguided ideas on how to prevent these despicable crimes. (She wrongly thought de-stigmatizing attraction to children would make people less likely to act on it. More background on her talk here: snopes.com/fact-check/tedx-p…) Regardless: It is slanderous to take an 8-year-old clip of someone with no known affiliation with the LGBTQ movement and use it to baselessly accuse an entire group of supporting one of the most vile crimes imaginable.

I enjoyed joining @fakedansavage this week for a friendly debate about monogamy. Dan is a great interlocutor: kind and respectful while also thoughtfully and capably defending his view. You can listen to the first 25 minutes of our conversation here: youtube.com/watch?v=IVwBBw_U…

Gay marriage supporters are a sleeping giant of American politics. Most of us aren't currently focused on the topic because the threat to it still seems remote. But there's a reason why there was such a furor over the Kim Davis challenge to Obergefell last year, even though most legal analysts thought it had only the slimmest of chances: marriage equality has had an enormously positive impact on the lives of millions of people—both adults and children—and it has a deep well of support across a striking range of demographics. There are now openly gay people in every demographic group in the country: Democrats and Republicans, independents, members of all religions, every race and ethnicity, and every socioeconomic class and region. And it isn't just gay Americans who will fight for our right to marry and for equal protection under the law for our families. It is so many of our loved ones: our parents, our siblings, our cousins, our childhood friends who flew halfway across the country to be at our weddings as we said our vows. If you are straight, think about how important your marriage and family are to you. What wouldn't you sacrifice—and what wouldn't you reprioritize in your life, your giving, your advocacy, and even your voting—to protect them? That is how passionately gay Americans will fight to defend our marriages and our families, too. And we will be joined by a vast array of people who deeply love us. Pride parades circa 2015 will be dwarfed in scale. Slogans can grow trite over the years, but more than anything, same-sex marriage really is about love: our love for our spouses, our love for the children many of us are raising or have raised, and our families' love for us. That sort of love is a uniquely potent force that should not be underestimated, and if some conservatives overplay their hand in this moment and require us to relitigate this topic, then make no mistake: It will be a political earthquake. A sleeping giant will be reawakened. We will invest more passion and energy into this campaign than our opponents could ever dream of matching. And we will win again.

If you're wondering how credible this new anti-gay marriage organization is, look no further than their home page, which literally tries to present Barack Obama(!) as a gay marriage opponent. This is just embarrassing. Obama's quote was not about gay marriage, and every gay marriage supporter would agree that loving mothers and loving fathers are both important. We just think that two loving mothers or two loving fathers can also make great parents—which is Obama's view, too. If an organization is this willing to resort to deception about something so demonstrably false, then why would they expect anyone to take their other claims seriously?

Jim Brownson was a first-rate biblical scholar and an even better man. His book "Bible, Gender, Sexuality" powerfully reshaped the conversation about same-sex relationships in the church, and it will continue to change lives and build up the body of Christ for many years to come. I am deeply grateful to have known this wonderful man of God. If his work made a difference in your life, you can leave a tribute or send flowers to his family here: langelandsterenberg.com/obit…. He was a gift to so many, and his loss will be felt widely.