I Grew Up Gay. I Grew Into Queer.
- C. Aigner Ellis
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
Matthew Vines is right that words matter. But queer people did not create the political backlash now threatening gay rights.
Matthew Vines recently published a guest essay in The New York Times titled “I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters.”
On one level, his declaration should be uncomplicated.
If Vines says he is gay and not queer, then that is how he should be identified. Nobody should be required to reclaim a word that does not feel like home. For some people, “queer” represents freedom, community, cultural resistance and possibility. For others—particularly those who remember it primarily as a slur—it still carries pain they have no interest in repackaging as pride.
Words matter. Personal identification matters.
My concern begins when a personal distinction starts operating as a political hierarchy.
There is a difference between saying, “Queer does not describe me,” and constructing an argument in which gay people represent biological certainty, commitment and ordinary life while queer people become associated with ideological rebellion, gender nonconformity and relationships that make heterosexual society uncomfortable.
That is where vocabulary becomes respectability politics.
The Poll Is Real. The Blame Is Misplaced.
Vines’s essay followed a troubling Gallup report showing that public support for LGBTQ rights and identities has declined from recent peaks.
Gallup found that 65 percent of Americans support legal same-sex marriage, down from 71 percent in 2022 and 2023. The percentage who consider gay and lesbian relationships morally acceptable has fallen to 62 percent, its lowest level since 2016. Acceptance of changing one’s gender has also declined, from 46 percent in 2021 to 38 percent in 2026.
Those figures deserve serious attention.
Progress is not permanent. Marriage equality did not end homophobia. Increased visibility did not automatically produce lasting security. A right that appears settled can become vulnerable when political leaders decide that resentment is electorally useful.
But Gallup’s findings do not demonstrate that queer people caused this decline.
Most of the recent movement has occurred among Republicans. Republican support for same-sex marriage fell from 55 percent in 2021 and 2022 to 37 percent in 2026.
Acceptance among Democrats remained largely stable, while independents showed a smaller decline.
That looks less like the country thoughtfully reconsidering LGBTQ terminology and more like the result of an organized conservative backlash.
Queer people did not manufacture the political campaigns targeting transgender health care.
Queer people did not reintroduce conversion-therapy language into mainstream political conversation.
Queer people did not create the media ecosystem that treats gender expression as a civilizational emergency.
Queer people did not persuade Republican voters to withdraw support from marriages that have been legal nationwide for more than a decade.
We should not confuse a coordinated campaign against LGBTQ people with a branding problem caused by LGBTQ people.
What Vines Does Not Say—and What His Argument Still Implies
To be fair, Vines does not explicitly call for gay people to abandon transgender people.
He does not directly argue that the “T” should be dropped from the coalition. He does not say that gay men and lesbians should walk away from anyone whose identity or politics falls under the queer umbrella.
That distinction matters.
Still, the implication is difficult to ignore.
When gayness is presented as innate, stable and compatible with ordinary American life, while queerness is framed as an adversarial relationship to normality, an escape route begins to appear.
The respectable gay person can approach conservative society and say:
I am not trying to disrupt anything. I was simply born this way. I want a spouse, a home, a family and a place in the church. I am not like those other people.
The second sentence may remain unspoken, but the political bargain depends on it.
That bargain is not new.
Marginalized communities have repeatedly been encouraged to separate the acceptable members from the allegedly dangerous ones. The respectable are offered conditional admission if they agree not to make too much noise about those still standing outside.
But respectability is a revolving door, not a permanent shelter.
The same political movement attacking transgender people today can return to same-sex marriage tomorrow. The same religious institutions insisting that gender is fixed frequently maintain that gay relationships are sinful. The people drawing distinctions between “reasonable” gays and “radical” queers are not necessarily preparing to protect the reasonable gays once the radicals have been removed.
They may simply be deciding the order in which to come for us.
I Understand the Instinct Because I Once Shared It
There was a time when I resented being asked about transgender issues.
I would think: What does that have to do with me?
I am a gay man. Sexual orientation and gender identity are different. I did not understand why being gay apparently required me to develop a public position every time a transgender issue appeared in the news.
I saw gay rights as my political lane.
Transgender rights felt like another subject—one I might support generally without believing it had much connection to my own life.
Part of that came from the period in which I grew up. We used “gay” for nearly everything. Gay men were gay. Lesbians were often included under gay. The entire collection of people now described as LGBTQ could simply be called “the gay community.”
That was the vocabulary many of us inherited.
I was not always quiet about my lack of understanding, either.
On “Balls to the Wall,” from my No Faux album, I made a joke involving Caitlyn Jenner. I used her transition as a play on the idea of transformation.
There is nothing wrong with transformation. People transform emotionally, spiritually, physically and creatively throughout their lives.
But it is not my place to determine whose transformation is legitimate. It is not my place to turn someone else’s identity into a punch line and then insist that only my intention should matter.
I cannot be bold when making the joke and become vague when discussing how I grew beyond it.
Public evolution requires receipts.
Years later, I gave a speech at Trans Pride while wearing a dress.
I was not claiming a transgender identity. Wearing a dress did not give me the lived experience of a transgender woman.
It was an act of public solidarity.
It was important for me to reject the idea that femininity is shameful, that gender-nonconforming expression makes a person less worthy or that transgender people should stand at the front of the fight alone while cisgender gay people wait to see whether supporting them is politically convenient.
That moment did not erase everything I had previously said or believed.
Growth is not an Etch A Sketch.
It did demonstrate that I had moved.
What Transgender Rights Eventually Taught Me
I came to understand that transgender rights do have something to do with me—not because gay and transgender experiences are interchangeable, but because the machinery used to police transgender people is often the same machinery used to police gay people.
It is the machinery that decides which bodies are acceptable.
Which clothing belongs to which gender.
Which forms of masculinity and femininity are natural.
Which families deserve recognition.
Which relationships are legitimate.
Which identities may enter public life without apology.
And which members of a coalition can be sacrificed without everyone else making too much noise.
My solidarity grew when I stopped asking, “Is this exactly my experience?”
I began asking different questions:
What kind of power is operating here?
Who is being harmed?
What precedent is being established?
And who will that power target next?
Coalition does not require identical experiences. It requires an understanding that none of us remains free for long when the state gains greater power to regulate identity, bodies, families and public expression.
Somewhere Along the Way, I Became Queer
My relationship with the word “queer” also evolved without a formal announcement.
I did not hold a personal branding meeting.
Nobody issued a memorandum.
Somewhere along the way, queer simply became the term I used most naturally when speaking collectively about LGBTQ people.
I did not fully notice the shift until after I had written Rainbow Soul.
Throughout the manuscript, I use “queer” to discuss Black artists, musicians, communities and cultural traditions that do not fit neatly within heterosexual or gender-conforming expectations. The word allows me to examine sexuality, gender presentation, nightlife, chosen family, spirituality, performance, creativity and resistance without pretending everyone in that lineage possessed the same identity.
Thankfully, I am comfortable with the terminology.
Otherwise, I would need another edition before the first edition even arrived.
But the shift means more than publishing convenience.
“Gay” still accurately describes my sexual orientation.
“Queer” describes a wider relationship to culture, history and power.
It acknowledges that my sexuality does not exist separately from my Blackness, artistry, spirituality, gender expression or political consciousness.
I did not stop being gay when I began using queer.
I stopped expecting the word gay to carry the entire story by itself.
Biology Was a Strategy, Not a Complete Philosophy of Freedom
Vines is concerned that queer politics weakens one of the most effective messages of the modern gay-rights movement: sexual orientation is not chosen.
I understand why “born this way” mattered.
It offered gay people an appeal to innocence:
We did not choose this, so please do not punish us for it.
That argument helped parents reconsider what they had been taught. It created space in some religious communities. It reassured gay children that they were not deliberately rebelling against their families, churches or society.
It was politically useful.
But it is not a complete foundation for liberation.
Human dignity cannot depend entirely on whether science proves that every dimension
of identity was biologically predetermined.
People deserve freedom because of what they cannot change, certainly.
They also deserve freedom to make choices.
People choose their religions, yet religious freedom is protected.
People choose their political beliefs, yet political expression is protected.
People choose whom to marry.
They choose their clothing, communities, names, careers and forms of creative expression.
Why must LGBTQ people prove helplessness before we qualify for liberty?
“I cannot help it” may generate sympathy.
“I should not have to justify it” creates a stronger foundation for freedom.
Biology may help explain sexual orientation.
Biology should not be the price of admission for human rights.
Ordinary Lives Are Not the Only Lives Worth Defending
Gay people live ordinary lives.
We marry. We raise children. We attend church. We go to work. We pay taxes. We argue about bills and fall asleep halfway through movies we insisted on watching.
There is value in showing that reality.
But equality cannot become a reward for imitating heterosexual life convincingly enough.
The trouble with respectability is that the bouncer keeps changing the dress code.
Today, the married, professional, churchgoing gay man is welcomed as proof that gay people are “just like everyone else.”
Tomorrow, the same political forces may decide that his marriage, family or presence around children remains unacceptable.
Meanwhile, transgender people, gender-nonconforming people, poor queer people, unmarried people and those in nontraditional relationships are left outside.
That is not liberation.
That is probation.
Respectability politics asks marginalized people to believe oppression can be negotiated individually:
Perhaps they will leave me alone if I prove I am not like those other people.
Black people know that bargain.
Women know it.
Immigrants know it.
Gay, queer and transgender people know it.
The bargain allows one person to become a temporary exception while leaving the oppressive system intact.
Eventually, the system returns for the exception.
The Word Matters. The Coalition Matters More.
Matthew Vines does not have to call himself queer.
His boundaries around personal identity deserve respect.
But the larger political argument deserves scrutiny.
Are transgender people expected to become quieter so gay people can regain conservative approval?
Are nonbinary people expected to become less visible?
Are queer artists expected to become less provocative?
Are younger people expected to abandon language that better describes their lives?
Are people in nontraditional relationships expected to disappear until heterosexual
America feels comfortable again?
Are the most vulnerable members of the coalition supposed to remain behind while the respectable attempt to cross the political checkpoint?
That is not solidarity.
That is an evacuation plan with a selective passenger list.
Gallup’s numbers should sober us. They remind us that rights do not protect themselves and public approval can move backward.
But the response cannot be to divide ourselves into acceptable and unacceptable identities.
We defend marriage equality because families deserve legal protection.
We defend transgender people because bodily autonomy and participation in public life cannot belong only to those society considers comfortable.
We defend gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer and gender-expansive people because nobody should have to audition for citizenship by appearing harmless.
Call yourself gay.
Call yourself queer.
Call yourself both.
Use the language that tells the truth about your life.
I grew up gay.
I grew into queer.
Both words belong to me now.
The label matters.
What matters more is whether our freedom requires someone else to disappear.
Mine does not.
Watch the Conversation
This article accompanies an episode of The Commentary with Anye Elite exploring Matthew Vines’s essay, the decline in public support for LGBTQ rights, my evolution on transgender solidarity and the political limits of respectability.
Watch the full video podcast, share it with someone navigating this debate and subscribe to Icon City News to remain louder, smarter and more connected.
From the Rainbow Soul Runway
Rainbow Soul: A Chosen Lineage of Black Queer Music, Memory, and Becoming explores how language, visibility, chosen family and cultural inheritance shape the lives we are free to build. The book arrives August 31, 2026.
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