Many of our readers have probably heard of Matthew Vines, who released a video earlier this year arguing for a revisionist understanding of Scripture on the morality of same-sex sexual activity. The video has gained a lot of attention—over 400,000 views—and he has also recently been profiled in the NYT.
Today, in First Things: On the Square, I offer a response, which can be found here.
“These are my desires / and I will give them up to you this time around and so / I’ll be found with my stake stuck in this ground / marking its territory of this newly impassioned soul . . . But you / you’ve gone too far this time / you have neither reason nor rhyme / with which to take this soul which is so rightfully mine.” -Mumford and Sons, ‘Roll Away Your Stone’
The subject of sexual orientation change efforts has come up in a lot of different contexts since my recent pieces in First Things. From what I can tell, it seems that such efforts can have significant positive effects; at the same time, the ready promotion of orientation change is a dangerous response to the pastoral questions of homosexuality.
Over at Sexual Authenticity, Melinda Selmys has recently written a post on coming to terms with the deep reality of her sexuality. She referenced a post of mine on a private blog; since she found it helpful, I thought I’d share it publicly:
My follow-up piece is up on First Things. There are a couple of qualms I have about the final form—for which I take full responsibility for having rubber-stamped it too quickly—which I’d like to clarify:
1) I should have spent more time emphasizing that whether one identifies as “gay” or as “struggling with same-sex attraction” depends significantly on one’s experience. I don’t want to negate the experience of those who identify as SSA; that may well be the best approach for them. Some of that is there in this piece, but it should have been clearer.
2) The quote from Melinda Selmys was not in my original draft, and on reflection I’m less sure that I’m comfortable with the role that it plays in the final piece. I would be more comfortable phrasing it thus:
There has been a fair amount of response to my recent piece in First Things. Much of it is positive: the responses by Elizabeth Scalia, by Rod Dreher, and most of all by those who know me are particularly laudatory. There has also been a good deal of negative response, and some of my friends have taken up the task of coming to my defense with a courage that can only be described as heroic (you know who you are). Unfortunately, such tasks tend to be endless, as the problematic attitudes are often very deeply entrenched, and people have expressed frustration over this. While beautiful cracks seem to be appearing, there is still much to be done, and I would be surprised if this problem (or any other problem in the Church or society) is entirely resolved in my lifetime.
First Things has published a short piece I wrote on the recent Dan Savage debacle. Note: I did not choose the title!
Update: Elizabeth Scalia (“The Anchoress”) has picked up the article and offered her own commentary.
Update II: Rod Dreher has also responded to the article.
Spiritual Friendship 