Hi Matthew, thank you for this longer exposition of your view. It’s good to see a fuller and clarified argument - something I appreciate could not be offered in the confines of a short newspaper article. The explicit expression of support for trans people is especially welcome, and while it should have been included in the original article, you have been very clear about it since its publication, and I applaud that.

It seems to me, though, that the main points of contention between you and many of your critics (myself included) remain, and in fact come through clearer.

You think that the current backlash against sexual and gender minorities (is this a fair, neutral term?), particularly on the part of conservative Christians, is in (large?) part due the anti-normative aspect of queer theory, and you particularly single out non-monogamy and a critique of marriage in toto as things you think have scared them. You also say that this sort of thing risks confirming the idea that the “slippery slope” thesis is correct: accept same sex marriage, and a broader renegotiation of sexual and gender norms will follow.

Because of this, you turn to people advocating for a more radically open sexual ethic and say, basically, “Get back in your box! You are hurting the cause! I am not with you!”

This is exactly what we thought you were saying! Our criticisms are not mollified but confirmed by this even more explicit expression of your project. You view the acceptance of gender and sexual minorities through a conservative Christian lens, and your proposed remedy to our current situation is to discipline other, more radical, LGBTQIA+ people: tell us that we are harmful and wrong and you want nothing to do with us, politically.

This is respectability politics, explicitly: it is drawing a line around some members of our own community and saying “Your demands, needs, hopes, dreams are morally unacceptable - and I need to signal that loudly to indicate to others I am not one of you!”

It is also victim blaming: it is saying to people on the receiving end of a political campaign of stigmatisation and marginalisation “You are (at least partly) the cause of your own oppression!”

What I don’t see here is any understanding that the people who are using the perceived excesses of queer politics as an excuse to bash all LGBTQIA+ people are simply wrong to do that. The idea that marriage equality should be contingent on other people not making further attempts to change sex, gender, and relationship norms is flatly unsupportable. The original justice claim stands or falls on its own merits.

So, the conservative Christians you are speaking to are making a grave moral error. Their argument is invalid and evil. But you, at this point, turn the wrong way: instead of telling them their arguments are wrong and wicked, you tell the people they want to harm that they are in the wrong! You validate conservatives’ fears, and redirect blame away from them and toward queer radicals. The moral failure is conservative Christians’, but the moral opprobrium is sent toward queer radicals. This is outrageous.

So much for the strategic part of your analysis. But here, you make it much clearer that your opposition to queer politics is not just strategic, but substantive. You are actually opposed yourself, for religious reasons, to a queer renegotiation of sexual, gender, and relationship norms. You explicitly talk about supposed “harms” from the “normalisation of non-monogamy", for instance.

This is what many of us have always suspected, and actually makes your critique worse! At least if your opposition were strategic, you could say “I support your freedom to live as you choose in theory, but think it unwise to be too public about that right now in practice.” But actually, you do not morally support the freedom of people to pursue the life arrangements they desire. So here, your sympathy with (more) conservative Christians becomes clear: you are sympathetic to them not just because you see and can understand their concerns, but because to an extent you share them. You agree with their moral judgment, at least in so far as they object to nonmonogamy and other parts of the queer liberation project!

At this point, it becomes impossible to understand what you want from your critics. Our substantive critique of your position is correct, in that it doesn’t misrepresent your views. We have correctly identified that you are promoting respectability politics as a matter of strategy, are victim blaming as a matter of fact, and do not even support our normative aims as a matter of morals. You are thus opposed to our freedom and to our ever getting it. You are not offering wise strategic counsel from within the queer liberation movement - you have placed yourself outside tit. So I will not, with the greatest respect, say “Thank you for your advice, fellow traveler!” - you are on a different path.