I’m a Gay Therapist—and I Don’t Identify as Queer

Last month, an essay by Matthew Vines went viral after he stated plainly: “I’m gay, not queer” in a New York Times essay. The response was immediate—and much of the backlash came from within the LGBT community itself.

This week, I made the same distinction in a post of my own. The reaction was enormous. Many gay men told me they finally felt seen, while others accused me of being divisive, exclusionary, or even hateful.

So I want to explain what I actually mean—and what I don’t---when I say "I'm gay, not queer." This is not an argument that nobody should call themselves queer. It is an argument that nobody should be required to.

1. I don’t know what “queer” means.

My biggest issue with the term is simple: it feels vague. I’ve asked many people who identify as queer what the word means to them, and I often receive very different answers. Those definitions may all be personally meaningful and completely valid. But taken together, they don’t give me a clear, coherent understanding of what the label actually describes.

Sometimes the term seems to imply a rejection of traditional gender or sexuality categories. Other times, it carries undertones of political activism, opposition to the gender binary, or a broader resistance to social norms. But even those ideas are defined differently depending on who is using the word. That ambiguity may be part of the term’s appeal for some people. For me, it creates distance from my identity. Simply put, I can’t identify with a label when I don’t clearly understand what it means.

2. It took courage for many of us to say, “I’m gay.”

For many gay people, calling ourselves gay was not easy. It took years of fear, shame, confusion, and soul-searching before we could say the word out loud. You all know the story. Some of us had to risk rejection from our families, our communities, or the people we loved. At some point, we had to find the strength to stop hiding and finally name ourselves clearly.

For me, the word gay does not feel limiting or outdated. It represents all the work it took to understand who I am, accept it, and speak it without shame. So when that identity is casually replaced with a different label—one I did not choose and do not identify with—it feels jarring and deeply incongruent.

I understand that language evolves. But evolution should not mean rebranding people without their consent. I fought to be able to say that I am gay. I will not be shamed for continuing to say it.

3. This is about freedom—and the right to name ourselves.

One hill I will die on is my right to speak my truth. And I will defend that same right just as strongly for everyone else.

People should be free to call themselves whatever feels most accurate and meaningful to them. If the word queer reflects your identity, I respect your right to use it. I want queer people to own that label proudly, just as I own the word gay.

But that respect has to go both ways. If I call myself gay, then I am gay. I should not be pressured to adopt a broader label because someone else believes it is more inclusive, modern, or politically appropriate.

None of us gets to decide what another person must call themselves. You name yourself. I name myself. No pressuring. No negotiations. That is what respect looks like.

4. “Queer people fought for your rights” rewrites history.

Whenever I say that I am gay—not queer—I’m inevitably told: “Queer people fought for your rights, and now you’re erasing them.” But that's not true. In fact, that framing rewrites the history of our movement.

The people who fought for the freedoms I have today included gay men, lesbians, bisexual people, transgender people, drag queens, gender-nonconforming people, and many others.

I am deeply grateful to them. The vast majority of them did not refer to themselves as "queer."

The major organizations and movements of that era did not generally organize under one collective identity called “queer.” They spoke about gay liberation, lesbian and gay rights, bisexual visibility, and transgender rights.

At the time, “queer” was still widely used as a slur against many of the very people now being retroactively described by it. Its broader reclamation as a positive political and personal identity became prominent way, way later.

You cant retroactively rename an entire generation of activists in order to pressure gay people today into adopting a label they may not identify with. That is manipulation, gaslighting and, frankly, bullshit. No one has to take my word for it. Many of those activists are still alive. You can ask them directly.

Rejecting the term "queer" in no way erases the people who fought for me. If anything, rebranding them as such without their consent is.

5. Why I Say “Gay, Not Queer”

I understand that people get fired up online. They debate, disagree, and sometimes say things more harshly than they would in person. That comes with speaking publicly, and I can handle disagreement.

But the level of outrage I received was so severe that it forced me to reconsider something. I had assumed that, beneath our differences, we were all largely operating from the same values: dignity, freedom, tolerance, and the right to define our own lives.

Now, I’m not so sure. My values do not include demanding that other people use language chosen for them. They do not include force-feeding someone a label and then treating their refusal as a moral failure. I do not feel a sense of kinship with that way of thinking.

I feel kinship with people who defend individual freedom—even when we disagree wildly.

People who can say, “That is not how I identify, but I respect your right to identify that way.”

People who do not require conformity as the price of belonging. Those are my people.

Call them gay, queer, straight, liberal, conservative, or anything else. The label matters less to me than the principle.

You live your truth. I’ll live mine. And we defend each other’s right to do so. That is what real freedom looks like to me.