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.”
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