Matthew Vines

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

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=desk…

@MattSmith2044 @RonanMcCrea Chapters 6 and 7 are particularly relevant to your post, but the whole book is excellent. Hope you enjoy it!

@VinesMatthew @RonanMcCrea No but I'd be fascinated to. Haven't heard of this until just now thanks for the rec!

A big risk many gay men face is the “pendulum swing.” Many respond to a worldview that feels too tightly bound by embracing one with no restrictions. Strict abstinence from all sex and substances may be incorrect, but you will age very poorly if you replace it with Molly three times a month and endless cycles of steroids. The correct response to inaccurate values is not the removal of all value judgments. Some then reject much of Western thought entirely, unaware that the ideals they champion such as love of brother, human dignity and equality are deeply shaped by Greco-Christian philosophy. It’s understandable to resent a religion that caused harm. But there is something contradictory in cursing the giants on whose shoulders you stand. The most interesting and happiest people I’ve met are those who think critically about their choices and resist all or nothing living. The same applies to those who never left religion. Black and white “God said so” answers are… dull. Maybe the straight and narrow path you were taught was a bit too straight;) But it is true there are far more ways to fail than to succeed. It’s much easier to become envious, gluttonous and slothful than to become disciplined, loving and strong. Gay or straight, moderation, forgiveness, courage, generosity and charity are vital guides for human flourishing.

Hi, Glenn—Thanks for responding, and I hope you are doing well. As for your question, every group has struggles regarding its boundaries, and I am on the record that I think the LGBTQ movement needs to do a better job on that front. I also don't use the "+" sign because I find it vague and unhelpful. But your standard here is not compelling. As long as you assume any random person supports gay rights, then you are justified in claiming that anything they say can now be declared to be the position of the "LGBTQ movement" as a whole? I don't think you would ever let someone get away with such a flimsy kind of accusation by assumed association toward conservative Christians, nor should you. Pedophilia is widely categorized as a paraphilia instead of a sexual orientation, and it is a particularly abhorrent paraphilia at that. Regardless of what anyone calls it, there are of course no grounds for accepting it. Thankfully, although I have a number of disagreements with more radical LGBTQ activists today, pretty much all of them I've ever met (which is quite a few) would share your and my abhorrence at pedophilia. If anything, many contemporary ultra-progressives are much more likely to obsessively problematize five-year "age gap" relationships of adults who are both in their 30s than they are to tolerate child abuse in any way. If your view is that particular logical premises lack sufficient guardrails and can too easily be exploited toward dangerous ends, then make that argument. I would actually agree with that when it comes to queer theory in particular, which is why I have been very critical of that field. But you and Lila lose credibility when you don't just say "I think X could lead to Y for these reasons," but you explicitly claim that "the LGBTQ movement is now advocating for pedophilia to be considered a new sexual orientation"—all based on your assumption that this random German med student who gave one talk 8 years ago supports gay rights and might, for all we know, privately identify as queer (complete speculation, of course). This is "I don't know, but I know know" logic, and it can very easily be used to wrongly smear anyone.

Matthew, if there are ‘known’ boundaries of what excludes anyone from the ridiculously expansive LGBTQIIAAP2S(addwhatyouwant)+ community, and a governing person or group that make that call, that’s news to me!! I am very sure Mirjam considers herself an enthusiastic and proud A-ally and very possibly Q. Of course, there are famously no cohering boundaries of your movement to determine who is NOT a part of it. You have the wonderfully inclusive and unrestrictive + to guarantee it! So you can’t close ranks that don’t exist when something arises that you don’t personally like. You know all too well you have folks in your circle who well believe MAP is a virtuous expression … and there is no Q orthodoxy that says otherwise. Also, your movement constantly tells us ALL sexual orientations must be respected equally. Archives of Sexual Behavior and Harvard Med School say pedophilia is a sexual orientation. Show me the section in the LGBT rulebook that makes this as clear as you claim!!

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/ted…) 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.

This is slanderous. This woman, Mirjam Heine, has no known connection to the LGBTQ movement. She was a medical student when she gave this talk in Würzburg, Germany, in 2018, so it is both irresponsible and dishonest of you to say this clip has anything to do with the "LGBTQ+ movement."

Horrific. The LGBTQ+ movement is now advocating for pedophilia to be considered a new sexual orientation.  “Pedophilia is simply just another sexuaI orientation. We need to overcome our negative feelings we have towards them and treat them with respect..” Being sexually attracted to children isn’t about inclusion; it’s necessitates essential therapy, treatment and strong boundaries to ensure no child is harmed.

These statistics aren't even accurate. 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%: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…. That means female same-sex couples were more likely to divorce than male same-sex couples in England and Wales in 2019, but it does not mean 72% of lesbian marriages in those countries ended in divorce (much less that 72% of lesbian marriages overall do). 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." This is not the first time you have misrepresented basic facts in your campaign against same-sex marriage, and your willingness to promote memes like this without first checking to confirm their accuracy does not inspire confidence in your overall representation of facts and data.

This stat crystallizes male–female differences. Women tend to struggle more with permanence. They can have high and sometimes temperamental emotional demands reflected by the fact that they initiate roughly 69% of heterosexual divorces. Men are more flexible with sexual boundaries and thus struggle with monogamy. By their own admission, around half of male couples are not physically exclusive. So when it’s two women, divorce rates skyrocket. When it’s two men, permanence = monogamish. Same-sex marriages bring out the worst in both genders. These stats tell a truth: gender diversity matters in marriage. Men and women bring different weaknesses and different strengths. When you have one of each, those differences temper and balance one another. That balance isn’t just good for adults. It’s objectively best for children.

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…

My favorite part of the video: "She wasn't even exhausted!" Oh, well, in that case... 😂 Ironically, if civil rights activists had been less strategic in who they elevated and had had less success as a result, you could easily see people making the inverse argument today: "Well, how bad could the injustices have been if they didn't even bother putting their best foot forward to try to change public opinion? Clearly, the harms of segregation have been exaggerated because anyone with a brain would've approached it more strategically if it had been as oppressive as people claim."

@VinesMatthew I'm not sure what his broader point is? It's well known that Rosa Parks and the civil rights activists were highly strategic. Their calculated nature doesn't negate the fact that the Jim Crow south was extremely discriminatory and they worked to dismantle the system.

"Exposing black history" lol so Conservatives are now using black history month to portray black people as nefarious villains in the American story? The next step in this project is to rewrite the civil rights movement as a malicious mistake.

Equality may be a god in communism (and forcing equal outcomes indeed leads to many injustices), but the Christian belief in the equal value of all people is not a god. It is a conviction that flows directly from our belief in God himself as the personal creator of all human beings, who made us all equally in his image. That Christian belief in the equal dignity of mankind is uniquely responsible for so much of the best of the Western world today: liberal democracy, the abolition of slavery, individual freedom and civil liberties, women's rights, even the rise of market capitalism itself (along with appropriate regulations for the protection of human dignity). Would you prefer to live among the Greco-Romans with their "might makes right" worldview? Because that is the inevitable result of summarily ditching the value of equality. The mighty might like it, but even they will have to accept mere relative superiority to the weak because the overall prosperity and safety of their societies will still be vastly degraded compared to what we enjoy today.

Equality is the god of the void. It is, without exaggeration, the worst possible core value. I don’t even like saying “equality of opportunity” because that accepts the enemy’s frame. I prefer “accurate measurement” or “efficiency in allocation” which are the actual goals.

See my pinned tweet of a recent hour-plus lecture I gave about why I think monogamy matters. I engage with Dan's view in the talk and explain why I hold the opposite view (and care a lot about it, in fact). That said, I like Dan a lot and he has been friendly and gracious to me despite thinking I'm wrong on this issue. I enjoy being in dialogue and relationship with people who disagree me on any number of things but who are still kind, generous, and respectful across those disagreements. x.com/VinesMatthew/s…

@VinesMatthew @fakedansavage Matthew, do you agree with Dan that monogamy isn't a thing? Is that another thing you evolved your Christian understanding on?

Anything on here about legally compelling straight men who get a woman pregnant to marry her? Anything on here about requiring married couples to stay married once they have kids? Are they talking about taking anything away from straight people? greaterthancampaign.com/about-us/

I have been very careful about the rhetoric I've used over the years and I have never said that opposing gay marriage makes someone a bigot, contrary to your claim here. Although I disagree with their view, I think most people who oppose gay marriage are kind and loving and want the best for others—and I've frequently defended them against unfair charges of hatefulness or ill intent. Misrepresenting my views like this does not advance your cause or enhance your credibility.

Slogans can grow trite. But they can also be exposed. You didn’t just argue for legal recognition. You emotionally manipulated the entire country, insisting that unless people redefined the most child-friendly institution the world has ever known, they were bigots who didn’t really love their gay family and friends. You told us “love makes a family.” But in practice, child loss made your families—loss of a mother, a father, or both, often by design, often for money. The mindset shift we need isn’t for “straights” to imagine how much they love their families. It’s for everyone to remember themselves as children. Did you love losing a parent to divorce, abandonment, or the gamete marketplace? If not, don’t incentivize and promote a model of family that enshrines that same loss into law and then calls it “constitutional.” If you were raised by your mother and father, which one would you have deemed optional to your identity formation, development, and sense of security? You know the answer is neither. So why would you codify another child’s loss of the very parents you so desperately needed? This wasn’t a misunderstanding, Matthew. It was a deception. The LGBT lobby insisted marriage had nothing to do with children—and after the SCOTUS ruling, turned around and demanded… children. In the LGBT worldview, adult desire is treated as sacred. Child loss is the required sacrifice. If you want to know what will actually provoke a political earthquake, it’s this: buying and selling children, manufacturing parent loss, and calling it “love.” That’s the line you crossed. And that’s the anger you should fear.

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.

I would enjoy that! And yes, if she had only made the post about fighting "homosexual behaviors" in law, I would've assumed she meant working to overturn/ban same-sex marriage. It was her follow-up response that seemed to go quite a bit further, as Dave wasn't just advocating for banning same-sex marriage but for criminalizing same-sex relationships themselves. Meg is obviously entitled to her view, but it was jarring to read at the time and has stuck with me since.

@VinesMatthew @emilykmay Thanks for reading. There's some idea of having us talk to each other at some point I hear, whether it will happen remains to be seen...

what's the end game here, yall? you're gonna overturn obergefell, dissolve gay marriage, and then what will you do with all the kids you've deemed to be in a "less than ideal" situation? say it with your whole chest.

Ah, gotcha. To be fair, I didn't support same-sex marriage in 2008 either but did by 2012 (although granted, I was quite a bit younger), so I feel like I'm in no position to judge anyone who's changed their mind on it, too. And since I can't know what's in other people's hearts, I try to err on the side of gratefully accepting any new converts. But I do recall that one of his '08 campaign staff members made some noise about his frustration with Obama's stance at the time, so you're not alone in having less rosy feelings.

@VinesMatthew He had to be pushed to support same-sex marriage! He went into office against same-sex marriage. I know for a fact that Michelle and his staff pushed him to support it but he really didn't. Just thought it was a good look at the end of the day.

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?

@HeidiBriones Interesting—how so, do you think?

@VinesMatthew Obama is very homophobic tho lol

I remember that and appreciated some of what she was saying until it took this turn. What do you think she had in mind here if not the criminalization of same-sex relationships themselves? It seems like the plain reading of her words in response to someone advocating "to criminalize the behavior." And P.S.: Although we obviously have significant disagreements, I've enjoyed reading some of your essays recently and appreciate both the independence and sharpness of your thinking.

@VinesMatthew @emilykmay I'm not convinced she precisely had in mind here the criminalization just of the act. I recall this thread and at the time she was actually getting swarmed from the right and called a lib for a few softer comments about friendship with gay people.

But this isn't the position of other, high-profile people involved in your organization. Here is Meg Basham just last year saying she thinks it is "fine" to criminalize same-sex relationships. And I note that you say "the state can permit adults to form consensual relationships," not "the state should" permit them to. Of course, the state can, but it's clear that some of your organizational partners don't think it should. And your own phrasing here doesn't go as far as saying "should" either, so I think this is an entirely valid question.

I can't articulate a limiting principle? Poor Matthew. You can't contend with our actual claims so you must strawman my position. Here's your articulation. "The state can permit adults to form consensual relationships, but it should only promote the one family structure that does not require a child lose their mother or father to be in it."