Public support for non-monogamy and polyamory has risen considerably in recent years. Many advocates argue that normalizing non-monogamy is a progressive reform in line with women's equality and same-sex marriage. But this view is seriously misguided, as I argue in this new talk. Normative monogamy played a critical and underappreciated role in enabling the rise of democracy, women's rights, and gay rights—and eroding that norm will undermine rather than advance those values. That is true whether the norm of monogamy is challenged from the right (i.e., patriarchal polygamy) or from the left (i.e., polyamory and consensual non-monogamy). From the teaching of Jesus himself onwards, Christianity has always upheld monogamy as an important moral standard. That norm has had a far greater and more beneficial impact on our society than many realize, and it cannot be altered without producing significant unintended negative consequences. In short: Monogamy matters, and it is very much worth defending. Why Monogamy Matters, from the 2025 @ReformationP conference: (0:00) Introduction (0:36) Same-sex marriage and slippery slope predictions (7:46) Non-monogamy statistics (11:42) Understanding consensual non-monogamy (16:29) A Christian case for non-monogamy? (20:43) Polygamy in the Old Testament (28:15) Emerging Jewish opposition to polygamy (31:58) Jesus's teaching on marriage and monogamy (34:16) The New Testament and monogamy (39:28) Polygamy vs. monogamy historically (45:13) Polygamy's math problem (47:06) How monogamy benefits societies (49:22) How polygamy harms women and children (51:37) How polygamy harms men and boys (53:15) How polygamy harms societies (55:58) What about modern polyamory? (57:03) Polyamory's math problem (58:46) Polyamory's community problem (1:07:16) Polyamory's gender problem (1:12:48) Gay men and monogamy (1:19:06) Why monogamy matters

Can Christians affirm gay marriage? ✝️ 🏳️‍🌈 @VinesMatthew & @DavidACBennett debate Side A, Side B & The Bible in our next edition of Uncommon Ground. ⭐️ Get Early Access NOW (ahead of its June 17 release date) when you support 👉 justinbrierley.com/support-m…

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.

This video captures a fundamental tension at the heart of conservative Christian views on homosexuality. On the one hand, many conservative Christians reject the very notion of identifying as gay based on the belief that one must never identify with sinful temptations, no matter how enduring or significant. According to this view, while it is acceptable to say that you "struggle with same-sex attraction," it is not acceptable to say that you "are gay," even if you commit to lifelong singleness and celibacy. But at the very same time, many other conservative Christians know full well that being gay is a permanent reality for a minority of people, and they instinctively wield this knowledge against them. If someone simply seems to be gay based on "the inflection of his voice," as this man says, they will deride him as unfit for leadership—even if he is a Catholic bishop who affirms Catholic teaching on homosexuality. It is certainly possible to oppose same-sex relationships and not hate gay people. But there is a reason why conservative Christian views on this topic are so often perceived as hateful. It's because homosexuality cannot be reduced to a behavior. It is deeply intertwined with personality traits and dispositions that have nothing to do with sexual ethics. And as such, it is difficult to encourage people to harbor an instinctive revulsion toward same-sex relationships that doesn't also foster at least some degree of revulsion toward people who are or simply seem to be gay. There is no equivalent to this dynamic with any other topic. There are not readily identifiable, non-chosen, non-sexual personality traits that mark someone as uniquely prone to adultery, envy, gossip, slander, lust, etc. Whatever one's view of homosexuality, in this core respect, it is different. And if you wonder why so many gay people leave the church, this video is instructive: Even if you never identify as gay and commit to lifelong celibacy, if the "way you speak" isn't masculine enough, you will be publicly disparaged by Christians who think it is somehow righteous to say that listening to you disgusts them as much as "looking at maggots."

Milo is not a serious person, but just for the record: I did not experience any trauma as a child. I was never abused. I had (and have) a wonderful relationship with both my father and mother, neither of whom were distant or overbearing. I had as ideal of a childhood as I could imagine, and I am still gay. It was not a choice or a trauma response. A small, stable minority of people across cultures simply happen to be exclusively attracted to the same sex. We don't know exactly why this is, but it is a demonstrable fact about the world, and twisting oneself into pretzels to deny it isn't going to change it.

If you care about gay rights, @RonanMcCrea's new book "The End of the Gay Rights Revolution" is a must-read. It is a manifesto as important for the 2020s as @sullydish's "Virtually Normal" was for the 1990s, and it deserves an equally broad audience. amazon.com/End-Gay-Rights-Re…

Everyone should watch this.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court rejects a call to overturn its decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. apnews.com/article/supreme-c…

This meme that's been circulating is false. The "72%" figure comes from a 2019 Office for National Statistics report about divorces in England and Wales. It found that of same-sex divorces specifically, 72% were between women and 28% were between men—which is why the numbers total 100%. That means female same-sex couples are more likely to divorce than male same-sex couples (at least in this survey, and others have shown similar dynamics), but it does not mean 72%—or anything close to that—of lesbian marriages end in divorce. In fact, the ONS report explicitly noted, "The relatively small number of divorces among same-sex couples does not allow accurate rates to be calculated at present." Source: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationa…