No body cameras. An unmarked vehicle. Officers in civilian clothing. A man is dead.
Stop arguing for just a moment, and let that sink in.
This is no longer just about one life. This is about the soul of our nation.
The whole world is watching America right now. They’re watching to see whether we still believe in justice, accountability, and the dignity of every human life – or whether we’ve become so divided that we’ve forgotten how to see each other as people.
Our greatest threat has never been one another. Yet every day we’re pushed further apart – by fear, by anger, by politics, by hatred. We are fighting each other while losing sight of what has always made this country strong: our unity.
When a nation is divided from within, it appears weaker to those who wish it harm. History reminds us that countries are strongest when their people stand together, not when they turn against one another.
This is bigger than immigration. Bigger than political parties. Bigger than race. Bigger than any single headline.
This is about whether we still have the courage to say that every human life matters, that every family deserves answers, and that justice should never depend on who you are or where you come from.
If we continue to let hate define us, then hate wins. If we continue to treat our neighbors as enemies, then we are helping destroy the very nation we claim to love.
America has always been at its best when ordinary people chose courage over fear, compassion over cruelty, and unity over division.
The world is watching.
Our children are watching.
History is watching.
The question is no longer who is right.
The question is who we will become.
Let’s choose to be remembered as the generation that refused to let hate have the final word. Let’s rise together – not as Republicans or Democrats, not as immigrants or citizens, not divided by race or background – but as human beings who refused to give up on each other.
Because if we lose our humanity, we’ve already lost everything that ever made America worth fighting for.
As you’ll see and hear, both the reading from A Course in Miracles and the lyrics of Tina’s song share a number of spiritual insights and truths.
I should note that the original Course in Miracles text uses the metaphor of father for the Divine Presence. I prefer and use the metaphor of lover as expressed in the phrase “Beloved One.” As with the previous adaptations I’ve shared (see here, here and here), if this one resonates with you, feel free to make it even more meaningful by using your preferred images and words: “God,” “Allah,” “Lord,” “Jesus,” “Holy One,” “Mother.” . . . I trust that they all serve as different pathways leading up the same holy mountain or, to use another metaphor, different gateways leading inwards to our center, the deepest part of which we all share. For as Henri Nouwen so beautifully reminds us: “In the depths of my being, I meet my fellow humans with whom I share [all things].”
____________________
Let me remember I am one with God.
Today let us give thanks for our Identity in God, the Beloved One of our Soul. Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. We can fail in nothing. Everything we touch takes on a shining light that blesses and that heals. At one with the Beloved and with the universe we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that the Beloved goes everywhere with us.
How holy are our minds! And everything we see reflects the holiness within the mind at one with God and with itself. How easily do errors disappear, and death give place to everlasting life. Our shining footprints point the way to truth, for the Beloved One is our Companion as we walk the world a little while. And those who come to follow us will recognize the way because the light we carry stays behind, yet still remains with us as we walk on.
What we receive is our eternal gift to those who follow after, and to those who went before or stayed with us a while. And the Beloved One, Who loves us with the equal love in which we were created, smiles on us and offers us the happiness we gave.
Today we will not doubt His Love for us, nor question His protection and His care. No meaningless anxieties can come between our faith and our awareness of the Beloved’s Presence. We are one with Him today in recognition and rememberance. We feel the Beloved in our hearts. Our minds contain His Thoughts; our eyes behold His loveliness in all we look upon. Today we see only the loving and the lovable.
We see it in appearances of pain, and pain gives way to peace. We see it in the frantic, in the sad and the distressed, the lonely and afraid, who are restored to the tranquility and peace of mind in which they were created. And we see it in the dying and the dead as well, restoring them to life. All this we see because we saw it first within ourselves.
No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. No thought of theirs but has the power to heal all forms of suffering in anyone, in times gone by and times as yet to come, as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now. Their thoughts are timeless, and apart from distance as apart from time.
We join in this awareness as we say that we are one with the Beloved. For in these words we say as well that we are saved and healed; that we can save and heal accordingly. We have accepted, and we now would give. . . . Today we would experience ourselves at one with the Beloved, so that the world may share our recognition of reality. In our experience the world is freed. As we deny our separation from the Beloved One, the world is healed along with us.
Peace be to you today. Secure your peace by practicing awareness you are one with your Creator, as He is with you. Sometime today, whenever it seems best, devote a half-an-hour to the thought that you are one with God. This is our first attempt at an extended period for which we give no rules nor special words to guide your meditation. We will trust God’s Voice to speak as He sees fit today, certain He will not fail. Abide with God this half an hour. God will do the rest.
Your benefit will not be less if you believe that nothing happens. You may not be ready to accept the gain today. Yet sometime, somewhere, it will come to you, nor will you fail to recognize it when it dawns with certainty upon your mind. This half-an-hour will be framed in gold, with every minute like a diamond set around the mirror that this exercise will offer you. And you will see the Beloved’s face upon it, in reflection of your own.
Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will see your own transfiguration in the glass this holy half-an-hour will hold out to you, to look upon yourself. When you are ready you will find it there, within your mind and waiting to be found. You will remember then the thought to which you gave this half-an-hour, thankfully aware no time was ever better spent.
Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will look into this glass, and understand the sinless light you see belongs to you; the loveliness you look on is your own. Count this half hour as your gift to God, in certainty that His return will be a sense of love you cannot understand, a joy too deep for you to comprehend, a sight too holy for the body’s eyes to see. And yet you can be sure someday, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will understand and comprehend and see.
Add further jewels to the golden frame that holds the mirror offered you today, by hourly repeating to yourself:
Let me remember I am one with God,
at one with the world and all within it,
and at one with my Self,
in everlasting holiness and peace.
________________
Now, it might seem a stretch for some to find similarities between the above text from A Course in Miracles and a song by the Queen of Rock’n’Roll, Tina Turner. But to my ears, mind and heart the similarities are there.
Tina was a practicing Nichiren Buddhist and Buddhism holds that reincarnation is part of the human/spiritual experience. Tina most resolutely explores reincarnation in her 1984 song “I Might Have Been Queen,” but she also does so in her later song “Whatever You Need,” which is about souls coming together in recognition over successive lifetimes.
These souls recognize that only love is ultimately real, and that the sacred source of all things (called “God” my many) is Love. Their ultimate identity is in this Love, a Love that illuminates the truth that we are all one. Moving through life with this truth and the illuminating vision it provides, ensures that, in the words of A Course in Miracles, “everything we touch takes on a shining light that blesses and heals.”
I don’t know about you, but I feel and see that energy of blessing and healing in the video for Tina’s “Whatever You Need.”
In what other lives have I known your kiss?
And what forgotten moments have I felt like this?
The way you touch me, I come undone
You know me more than anyone
Whatever you want
In what other lives have I touched your face?
And what words did we whisper
in a strange forbidden place?
To be with you, is to find myself
We’re two of a kind, you and I
I couldn’t love anyone else
You are my beginning, my end
You are my lover, my friend
In this life, in this time
Whatever you want, whatever you need
I will be right here waiting
Whatever you want
Whatever you need
I will be right here waiting, yeah, yeah, yeah
In what other lives, did I feel your skin?
And when exactly did I breathe you in?
Feel like I’ve known you for a thousand years
You’re so familiar to me and there is no fear
Watch the sun go down, yeah, yeah
My past and future in you are bound, oh yeah
I watch as time moves on, I’m alive and strong
And when I’m with you, there’s no right, no wrong
Nolan Wells’ death is all over my timeline. I’m seeing mostly Black folks talking about it and saying this is a cautionary tale for why Black parents should side eye these kinds of friendships where their child is “the only Black kid” in white spaces. What looks like acceptance and belonging could end up being a trap.
Fourth of July. Mississippi. An island. Water. A cluster of white boys. One Black boy missing. Nobody bothered to report him missing. That combination of facts lands in the Black imagination with historical weight and triggers our collective nervous system.
Black people are not reacting in a vacuum. We carry a whole archive of similar stories. We know what water has meant. We know what “boys being boys” has covered. We know what “accident” has sometimes been asked to explain. We know how many Black deaths have become official shrugs because the living white witnesses were granted innocence before the dead Black youth was granted humanity.
Now, that does not mean we know what happened here. But it does mean we know why Black folk are suspicious.
It’s being called “one of the most iconic photos of our time,” a future Pulitzer-winning photograph, and “the defining image” of Trump’s America.
Here’s what social commentator and media critic Tommy J. Housman has to say about Cheney Orr’s photo and the reactions it is generating.
Yesterday I posted a photograph of a Black woman sitting alone on a train surrounded by members of Patriot Front, a white nationalist and known hate organization that openly organized, promoted, live-streamed, and later claimed responsibility for the event. The post reached more than 80,000 people, generated over 21,000 engagements, and received more than 3,000 comments. What concerns me is how many people rushed to defend, excuse, minimize, or redirect attention away from an organization whose entire purpose is built around racial nationalism and exclusion. Instead of discussing why groups like this exist, why they are growing, or why Black Americans might find such imagery threatening, many commenters immediately began comparing it to unrelated crimes committed by random black individuals or openly expressing support for the organization itself. Completely ignoring the historical context of hate groups and what hate groups mean to Black people such as enslavement m, imprisonment, beating, rape, and death by lynching. Instead of acknowledging this history, people chose to laugh.
That should alarm every decent person in this country. Black Americans do not view organized groups of masked white nationalists through the lens of abstract political theory. They view them through the lens of slavery, lynching, segregation, racial terror, voter suppression, church bombings, and generations of organized efforts to intimidate and control Black people. What I saw in the comments was not thoughtful disagreement. I saw deflection, whataboutism, historical ignorance, and in some cases outright sympathy for a movement that defines itself through exclusion.
I saw similar reactions across multiple posts discussing the same event. That suggests a deeper problem than a handful of internet trolls. We have reached a point where large numbers of people seem more offended by criticism of a white nationalist organization than by the existence of the organization itself. Real strength is protecting people who are vulnerable. Real courage is standing against intimidation and hatred, not marching anonymously behind masks in a crowd. If thousands of Americans can look at a photograph of organized racial intimidation and see nothing wrong with it – or worse, defend it – we should all be asking ourselves what that says about the state of our country. Almost every comment and Laffey face was from a white man. Cowards.
This morning my friends Kathleen and Rita and I participated in a somber ritual of remembrance and call to action for all who have died in ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention.
Following is how the online community Humanizing Through Story described our gathering, one that was organized by the Minnesota chapter of the Sunrise Movement.
Today, July 4th, a funeral was held for the 52 people who died in ICE detention during the Trump administration. Hundreds of people rallied and carried caskets, one for each of the 52 victims. They crossed the Hennepin Avenue Bridge, marching in silence to the sound of songs led by The Singing Resistance. They marched to downtown Minneapolis, where they laid the caskets on the ground outside the U.S. Department of Justice building. There, they held a funeral service featuring eulogies, speeches, and songs honoring all the lives taken by ICE.
The 52 deaths represent only recorded accounts. This administration is actively trying to hide accusations of abuse and harm, and it recently issued a directive to stop recording deaths of immigrants who were recently released from custody. There have been multiple accounts of immigrants, including the elderly and those with mental health issues, being released by ICE in unfamiliar cities or during frigid winter temperatures, where they subsequently died. This number also does not account for other deaths’s involving ICE, such as those of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
There are endless reports of abuse, sexual assault, rape, torture, the withholding of food, contaminated water, the denial of medical care, and other inhumane conditions and treatment toward immigrants held in detention centers across the country. This protest was held not only to honor those who have died but also to raise awareness and call for an end to the inhumane treatment and detention of our neighbors.
– Humanizing Through Story via social media
July 4, 2026
Meanwhile, Melinda Fulton reports on a very different march that took place today in the nation’s capital.
I’m watching masked white nationalists march through Washington, D.C., on the Fourth of July carrying Confederate flags and “Reclaim America” banners, and I’m supposed to believe this has nothing to do with the man in the White House. I’m supposed to pretend this is just some fringe spectacle, disconnected from the political climate we’ve been living through for years.
But this is exactly what a Trump presidency looks like when you stop listening to the speeches and start paying attention to who feels empowered enough to march openly through the nation’s capital.
These aren’t random provocateurs looking for attention. They are members of Patriot Front, a white nationalist, neo fascist organization that openly promotes the idea of turning America into a white ethnostate. They chose to parade through Washington on the 250th anniversary of the United States because they believed that was the moment to make themselves seen.
Every time someone tells me that “MAGA is just about loving America,” I think about scenes like this. I think about the Confederate flags. The matching uniforms. The masks hiding their faces. The chants about “reclaiming” a country that never belonged exclusively to one race in the first place.
I think about years of rhetoric describing immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the nation, warning about “invaders,” talking about “enemies within,” and constantly dividing Americans into “real Americans” and everyone else. Then I watch groups like Patriot Front step confidently into the streets, and I’m expected to believe there’s no connection.
MAGA Republicans are the reason I want change in this country. They want me to believe this is normal now. They want me to accept that open white nationalism is just another political viewpoint, that marching through the capital in masks with fascist slogans deserves the same respect as people peacefully demanding equal rights.
I refuse.
If this is what Trump’s America looks like in the streets, then I’m going to keep saying exactly what I see. Those are his people. This is his movement. And if you’re still defending him, you don’t get to act shocked when people inspired by that movement show up dressed for a racist parade on America’s birthday.
So I’ve noticed that a lot of people adore Heather Cox Richardson as their politics whisperer, and I’ve wondered what the fuss was about. And so [I recently watched] a video she posted in the wake of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America] wins in New York. She said it was a "40-minute grad seminar to stem the tide of misunderstanding about whether the Mamdani [winning] picks are communists." So the vibe was partly to chastise right wing influencers for their hysteria [and] partly to reassure centrist Democrats that things are still the same.
I haven’t watched much of her content or read her books which I’m sure are more nuanced. But I think it’s fair to take this primer video as a solid sample of what she wants to communicate about the definitions of capitalism, communism, fascism, and socialism to her one million plus YouTube subscribers.
So she said that she wanted to describe these systems as economic systems first. So if I hear an intention like that, I’ve got a way of quickly measuring where the person is coming from and whose interests they’re possibly serving. You just copy the transcript from YouTube, paste it into any document, and run some word searches.
Here are the words she never utters in a talk about economy: “capital,” “labor,” “manufacturing,” “union,” “strikes,” “wages,” “appropriation,” “expropriation,” “exploitation,” “surplus,” “inequality,” “struggle,” “reform,” “taxation,” “redistribution,” “socialized,” and “revolution.”
In other words, she’s not talking about economy at all. The closest she comes to defining capitalism is as a system in which we tend to honor the idea of private enterprise and private property. No capital as a social relation; no idea of money that expands through capturing labor powewr. If you listen carefully to this lecture, you’ll come away thinking that liberal democracy comes from American elites deciding altogether on a sensible regulatory regime and not through labor violence or ruling class fear of revolution that forced the New Deal and every other gain like blood from a stone.
So based on this alone, I’d humbly offer that if you care about how power works, how capitalism works; if you care about modern imperialism and neocolonialism; if you care about working people, inequality, and the perpetual love affair between capitalists and fascists, and how liberal democracies basically play the wedding march for them down the aisle of history, Richardson may not help you with any of that because these ideas are actively suppressed by the liberal point of view she comes from but which she also presents – and many other preople take – as rational, neutral, correcting misunderstandings. She’s just calling balls and strikes from her fair position, taking the view from nowhere.
And I get why people love her. I lived in New England for a bunch of years, and I’m sure she is – or could be – a kind and gracious neighbor, a professor you really liked; someone you feel warm about. But as a Facebook historian, she appears to be doing full time propaganda for the legacy Democrats. And it’s not going to help anyone understand how to fight fascism. It’s really superficial.
If you have 12-minutes to spare, this is a timely and insightful video commentary by historian Tad Stoermer, author of A Resistance History of the United States and the forthcoming A Public History of the American Revolution.
In relation to the current situation in the United States, Stoermer insists that “disillusionment is not a collapse to be managed or a mood to be talked out of before the next election.”
Instead, disillusionment is best represented by “a comfortable person losing the ability to un-see what the people without his protections always knew.”
On the last day of Pride month, Matthew Vines, author of God and the Gay Christian, wrote an op-ed published in the New York Times that frames queer identities as a nemesis to what he still calls a “gay rights movement.”
Following are a number of responses which I find both insightful and inspiring. Perhaps you will too.
___________
I have so many things I could say in response to Vines article, but I’m not sure I even want to dignify his points with a response. For as much education as he has under his belt, this is utter nonsense. It’s a privileged, limiting, superficial, desperate attempt at protecting one identity by limiting the identity of others.
So let me make one thing very clear: BEING QUEER IS A GIFT, my dear friends.
AND IT MATTERS.
In all its arrays of beautiful barrier-breaking diversity, it is the biggest gift to the world and the deepest reflection of the Divine.
Who you are matters.
Your gay self.
Your bi self.
Your trans self.
Your non-binary self.
Your gender non-conforming self.
Your questioning self.
Your closeted and not safe to come out yet self.
Your intersex self.
Your pansexual self.
Your polyamorous self.
Your asexual self.
Your QUEER self.
ALL of who you are and what makes you unique is worth protecting and fighting for.
Don't let a weak, watered down, fearful approach to the world put yet one more baracade in front of you living your most whole, alive, completely embodied life. Live YOU. Be YOU. Love YOU.
Vines does not speak for me.
I'm gay AND queer. It matters. 🏳️🌈❤️🏳️⚧️
– Amber Cantorna-Wylde via social media
June 30, 2026
Our subversion of social norms is our power, friends. We exist in God’s creation specifically to be a thorn in the side of those who demand conformity.
The privilege and, frankly, gall it takes to look at the history of our movement – a movement populated with and propelled by freaks and outcasts who countered culture with all of the weirdness they could wear on their beautiful bodies – that privilege is the thing that has no place in this movement.
Anyone who says this:
“In a time of backlash, this is not a confusion that gay people can afford, especially those of us who live in red states and religious communities.”
. . . has lost touch with the heart of what we’re doing here.
We’re now bowing to culture. We’re not playing respectability politics, and we’re sure as hell not leaving any of our rainbow fam behind to score a few points with the bigots in power.
– Flamy Grant via social media
June 30, 2026
I worked in proximity with Matthew when I was at the National LGBTQ Task Force. Matthew leads the Reformation Project which is rooted in Calvinism. It seeks to stay within what I would call rigid, Reform Protestantism/mostly white Evangelical circles and just add LGBTQ (although mostly lesbian and gay) folks into a largely unchanged worldview.
While I appreciate his desire to work within really conservative circles, I do not agree with his premise.
Given the rise of White Christian nationalism – in many of the spaces in which he is seeking to operate – to advocate that the problem is the LGBTQ+/Queer movement's languaging and desire to transform dominant culture and narratives and not the danger posed by the "modern re-articulation of the Doctrine of Discovery" as Project 2025/Seven Mountain Mandate/New Apostolic Reformation are rightly called, is particularly dangerous right now. The violent misogyny, homo-, bi-, transphobia, the virulent xenophobia and racism of this movement threaten us all. And its long, long history here in the US is something that needs to be dismantled/repudiated.
Starting with the first piece of existing European art from the Americas (an etching portraying the mass execution of genderqueer or homosexual Cuna people by Balboa), gender and sexual variety have been used by the Doctrine of Discovery (and white, Christian supremacy) to distinguish between those who are human (Christian and Europeanm . . . which has evolved into Whiteness and Christian) and those who are heathen or savage.
As an LGBTQ+/queer movement, this grounding in the history of the Doctrine of Discovery and a more intersectional lens, makes me reject his argument. Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery and dismantling White Christian nationalism have to be the goal. Not appeasing or gaining entry into a diseased and distorted version of Christianity.
One more thing, Matthew is white, young, conservative Christian, able-bodied and cisgender. I don't hear a lot of BIPOC, non-binary, non-Christian, femme or woman-identified, disabled, etc queer folks making the same argument.
The argument that “queer” identity is harming gay people rests on a fragile foundation which assumes that the backlash we’re seeing is mostly the result of LGBTQ people becoming too broad, too visible, too complicated, too trans, too nonbinary, too politically unruly, and too unwilling to fit into a neat public-relations package. But that is not what I see.
I see a well-funded, well-organized backlash against all of us. I see politicians and preachers using trans people as a wedge because they know fear works. I see the same old machinery of dehumanization that was used against gay and lesbian people being repurposed against trans and nonbinary people. I see efforts to roll back LGBTQ protections, demonize gender-diverse children, restrict medical care, narrow public education, and revive old claims that our lives are threats to children, family, faith, and civilization itself. That didn’t happen because some young people began identifying as queer, but because the religious and political right never repented of its need for a scapegoat.
Gallup’s 2026 polling does show that support for same-sex marriage has fallen from its recent peak: 65% of Americans now support legal same-sex marriage, down from 71% in 2022 and 2023. The share saying gay or lesbian relationships are morally acceptable is at 62%, its lowest point since 2016. But Gallup also notes that most of the recent decline has occurred among Republicans, whose support for same-sex marriage fell from 55% in 2021 and 2022 to 37% in 2026.
In other words, the data doesn’t show that queer identity caused the backlash, but rather that we’re living through a partisan and religiously fueled backlash against LGBTQ people. Blaming queer identity for this anti-LGBTQ backlash feels like blaming the wounded for bleeding too loudly.
. . . I am, in many ways, exactly the kind of gay man respectability politics should love. I am a white, cisgender, out gay man. I am legally married to one man. I believe in covenant, fidelity, Scripture, tradition, reason, experience, and the sacramental life of the church. I believe marriage is one of the means of grace through which God answers the ache of Genesis: “It is not good that the human being should be alone.” I am a Christian pastor. I preach, preside at Holy Communion, baptize babies, visit the sick, bury the dead, officiate at weddings, and pray the prayers of the church. I have given my life to the ministry of Word, Sacrament, Order, and Service. In other words, I am hardly the caricature of radical disorder that some people imagine when they hear the word “queer.”
And yet, I am queer.
I’m queer not because I’ve rejected Christianity, marriage, sanctification, Scripture, or the church. I’m queer because I exist at the intersection of identities that many conservative Christians assert cannot belong together: gay and Christian, gay and married, gay and ordained, gay and faithful, gay and loved by God without first being made straight. That’s queer.
It’s queer because the systems that form so many of us have long insisted that those things were contradictions. They have screamed at us that we could be gay or Christian, but not both. Honest about ourselves or ordained, but not both. Married to our same-sex partners or faithful to God, but not both. True to ourselves or beloved by God, but not both. My life says otherwise, and that is why I have begun using the term “queer” for myself.
For a long time, I primarily used the word gay to describe myself. I still do. It’s true, accurate, and names my sexual orientation. But “gay” doesn’t always carry the full weight of what it has meant to survive the church’s attempt to divide me against myself.
That’s also part of why my forthcoming book is titled Suspended Grace: A Queer Pastor’s Journey. It will be available in November from Abingdon Press, and in it I explore much more fully what it means to live at the intersection of identities that the church has often claimed couldn’t belong together: gay, Christian, married, ordained, wounded, called, and beloved.
To be clear, I’m not using “queer” as a synonym for a political platform, a rejection of covenant, or a dismissal of Christian sexual ethics. For me, “queer” names something more than orientation. It names the disruption that happens when a life the church once called impossible becomes, by grace, fully visible. It names the reality that my life doesn’t fit inside the categories handed down to me. It names the grace that met me outside the boundaries of what I’d been told was possible. And it names the holy refusal to let shame have the final word. God didn’t rescue me by making me acceptable to the old system; God rescued me by showing me that the old system had lied.
For me, that’s not a rejection of Christian faith but a testimony to it. The Gospel is not nearly as invested in “normal” as some Christians seem to be. The incarnation isn’t normal. The resurrection isn’t normal. Grace isn’t normal. A crucified Messiah isn’t normal. A Table where the poor, wounded, sinful, excluded, respectable, and despised are all invited to receive mercy isn’t normal. The Kingdom of God isn’t a baptized version of middle-class respectability; it’s a new creation in Christ Jesus.
. . . I’m gay. I’m queer. I’m Christian, an ordained pastor, white, male, cisgender, married, and by many outward measures very conventional. And still, I’m queer. I’m queer because my life is only possible by the grace of a God who keeps crossing the boundaries fearful humans keep drawing. I’m queer because my marriage is a testimony against the lie that gay love can’t be holy. I’m queer because my ministry is a testimony against the lie that gay people can’t proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. I’m queer because my survival is a testimony against the lie that shame is the voice of God. I’m queer because I refuse to purchase my place in the church or the world by stepping over the bodies of those whom respectability would leave behind.
As someone who aspires to be a responsible ally, I respect every human being's personal perspective on these words and how they impact their own experience, Matthew Vines’ included.
I completely yield to his position regarding his own life and the way he wishes to exist in the world. I would never question that for him or anyone. We are all the authorities over our own humanity. I would never ask him to embrace queerness as a label any more than I would ask him to embrace heterosexuality.
Yet, I do feel that his words about the queer community seem to be born out of the misplaced feeling that he can somehow evade the Right's disdain and their punitive violence by distancing himself from supposedly "less palatable" expressions of sexuality, but that seems myopic to me. As a white gay man, Vines may feel he is distinct from a black trans woman (and of course he is), but to the hateful Evangelicals steering us into theocracy, there is no difference whatsoever.
To these phobic zealots, trans people are nonbinary people, are gay people, are nonconforming people, are lesbian people, are bisexual people.
It seems as though Matthew is choosing to lean away from the collective liberation of all marginalized people in the hopes of finding safety in the sexual and political expression of least resistance.
The real argument around Matthew Vines' article has little to do with what word people use – the headline is misleading. It has more to do with what tactics are used in the ongoing fight for LGBTQ+ equality and who gets included in that fight. Vines argues not that the word queer is absolutely unhelpful or inappropriate, but that the theory behind it is. He is opposed to how fluid the queer movement has become, including people who have diverse sexualities or gender identities beyond the binary "gay" and "lesbian", which he sees as fueling GOP opposition to the LGBTQ+ movement. He sees the queer project of opposing arbitrary norms as inherently unhelpful and dangerous. I disagree.
The science and psychology of sexuality and gender have evolved greatly. While it is true that there are many who experience "fixed" sexualities and genders (gay, lesbian, straight, cisgender male, cisgender female), we also know that there are many more who experience sexuality and gender on a spectrum.
I also disagree that simply fitting into the mold of being a respectable gay person is the path that led to LGBTQ+ rights and will help us achieve more robust LGBTQ+ rights in the future.
Many, and I'd venture to say most, LGBTQ+ people will never simply live the "normal life" – part of what makes our community so beautiful is that we get to show others the wide array of possibilities that exist for our lives beyond what has been considered "normal." If we are relying on convincing conservative America that "LGBTQ+ people are just the same as you", then we will never win, because it is glaringly obvious that many LGBTQ+ people are *not* just like them in many ways. In our fundamental humanity, yes. In our desire for love and relationships, yes. But we are also unique in many other ways in the way we desire to live our lives.
Instead, I, and many others, in the long tradition of queer activism, believe that the way we win is through living our "abnormal" lives out loud, for all to see, so that we can dispel the demonizing myths that the far right spins against us, and so that we can expand the possibilities for what life can look like for the broader population- more creative, more diverse, more free than ever before.
This is not a debate about what label people use. This is a debate about who is included in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality and how we continue to advance it. Assimilation has never been the path towards victory and has never been the goal – liberation has. That is where I disagree with Vines.
. . . Queerness, ultimately, is an invitation to and affirmation of human freedom. It’s an affirmation of the possibilities of human imagination. It’s a confrontation of our biases, our prejudices, and our desire to appease some arbitrary idea of “normal” in order to gain status and privilege.
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
"I believe your blog to be of utmost importance for all people regardless of their orientation. . . . Thank you for your blog and the care and dedication that you give in bringing the TRUTH to everyone."– William
"Michael, if there is ever a moment in your day or in your life when you feel low and despondent and wonder whether what you are doing is anything worthwhile, think of this: thanks to your writing on the internet, a young man miles away is now willing to embrace life completely and use his talents and passions unashamedly to celebrate God and his creation. Any success I face in the future and any lives I touch would have been made possible thanks to you and your honesty and wisdom."– AB
"Since I discovered your blog I have felt so much more encouraged and inspired knowing that I'm not the only gay guy in the Catholic Church trying to balance my Faith and my sexuality. Continue being a beacon of hope and a guide to the future within our Church!"– Phillip
"Your posts about Catholic issues are always informative and well researched, and I especially appreciate your photography and the personal posts about your own experience. I'm very glad I found your blog and that I've had the chance to get to know you."– Crystal
"Thank you for taking the time to create this fantastic blog. It is so inspiring!"– George
"I cannot claim to be an expert on Catholic blogs, but from what I've seen, The Wild Reed ranks among the very best."– Kevin
"Reading your blog leaves me with the consolation of knowing that the words Catholic, gay and progressive are not mutually exclusive.."– Patrick
"I grieve for the Roman institution’s betrayal of God’s invitation to change. I fear that somewhere in the midst of this denial is a great sin that rests on the shoulders of those who lead and those who passively follow. But knowing that there are voices, voices of the prophets out there gives me hope. Please keep up the good work."– Peter
"I ran across your blog the other day looking for something else. I stopped to look at it and then bookmarked it because you have written some excellent articles that I want to read. I find your writing to be insightful and interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more of it. Keep up the good work. We really, really need sane people with a voice these days."– Jane Gael
"Michael, your site is like water in the desert."– Jayden
