Gay evangelical Christian to speak at SF Pride

Mathew_Vines_khaled_Sayed

A young gay evangelical Christian will take the main stage at San

Francisco Pride this weekend with a message he’s hoping the throngs of

people will hear.

Matthew Vines, who stopped attending Harvard University after two

years, is an evangelical Christian from Kansas. He’s on a mission to

appeal to Christians who will listen to him about homosexuality and

same-sex relationships.

Vines believes that he can be openly gay and hold on to his Christian

community and tradition. The author of God and the Gay Christian ,

Vines will be speaking at the San Francisco Pride main stage Sunday,

June 28 at noon despite never having been to such a large LGBT Pride

event before.

Vines, 25, is aiming to open a dialogue about homosexuality and same-
sex marriage that he hopes will result in acceptance by evangelical

churches. Vines’ book set out to answer some of the questions he posed

like, Do biblical teachings on the marriage covenant preclude same-sex

marriage or not? How should we apply the teachings of Jesus to the gay

debate? What did Paul have in mind when he warned against same-sex

relations?

His book convincingly counters the millennia old argument that

homosexuality is a sin. Many Christians who oppose same-sex

relationships cite six key biblical passages, which Vines deconstructs to

reveal a theologically sound interpretation.

Acknowledging that there are passages condemning homosexuality in

the Bible, Vines, who is single, said he believes that people still can

learn about relationships from it.

“There are these passages in the Bible that refer to homosexual

behavior,” he told the Bay Area Reporter in an interview this week. “All

of them are negative. The behavior that the Bible addresses is

significantly different from the type of long-term committed

relationship same-sex couples experience today.”

According to Vines, the core of the Bible’s teachings about marriage is

about “keeping covenant with your spouse, about that commitment, the

same way that same-sex couples can and do live out every day.”

0 comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *