Born This Way?
Matthew Vines’ recent Op-Ed in the NY Times is entitled “I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters.” There’s a stick-in-the-sand title that caught my attention. As it suggests, he weighs in on the shifting, sometimes fraught terminology of non-heterosexual orientation, and shapes his view from direct experience. Vines is a committed churchgoing Christian, and is married to another man.
He begins by citing a Gallup poll that shows support for same-sex marriage steadily dropping among Republicans, and worries about Republican lawmakers attempting to overturn the Supreme Court case that made marriage equality a right. His worry is justified. Instead of focusing on the lawmakers and conservative activists who want to overturn the ruling, though, Vines draws a causal link between the rise of the term, “queer” and withering support for gay marriage.
Vines is critical of “queer”, and the increase of people identifying as such is for him problematic. He writes, ominously, that “subsuming the fixed reality of gayness under the much more malleable banner of queerness undermines a core premise behind gay rights: that sexual orientation isn’t chosen. And polling suggest that premise is, indeed, being weakened; the share of Americans who believe people are born gay has declined over the past decade.” I question the substantive value of such a poll, and I also doubt the implication that he draws from its result.
I would like to consider the political efficacy of the premise Vines names, “that sexual orientation isn’t chosen,” in our current climate, and will do so below. Firstly though, his assertion sounds like gatekeeping, which may or may not be what he is intending in his article. He seems to be suggesting that the “fixed reality” of his own gayness is also fixed for every other gay person. Furthermore, in regards to the term “queer”, he makes an error, an omission really. Vines’ issue with “queer” is that other gay people, specifically, are migrating to the term. Yet he doesn’t take into account those people who identify as queer and do not consider themselves simply squarely “gay” – and maybe never did, even if that’s how identified initially.
The freedom, and the challenge, of L.G.B.T.Q., is that everyone gets to decide themselves how they identify. For some, that may indeed mean changing their initial orientation. Needless to say, in principle, L.G.B.T.Q. does not favor one of its five groups over another. It signals a wider acknowledgement of the varieties of sexual orientation, and has advocated solidarity across the spectrum of sexuality that is not hetero. This solidarity has political application. As a political tool, L.G.B.T.Q. has not always been effective, because it is fraught with contradiction and infighting. Nevertheless, it has fostered solidarity among progressives, and empathy within the larger society, simply through the discourse it has initiated. This is a win, and will not be easily revoked.
