I have something to tell you all. I have tried to keep the boat from rocking but I'm drowning and I can't do this anymore. Every time I think about the fact that I haven't done this yet, I feel like I am suffocating, and it's killing me.
I am not heterosexual. Full stop.
I am equally attracted to men and women.
I am also a Christian.
I have bent myself into every shape you can imagine over very many years in denial, trying to make who I am sync up with what other people told me my faith had to look like. The standard, as far as I was told, is that experiencing attraction itself is sin, and also SOOOO GROSS and wouldn't it be weird if one of us liked girls???
So I was faced with a choice. Either I was a good Christian who was going to heaven who had a lot of intrusive thoughts but totally didn't like girls at all, or i was one of the rampaging homosexuals who was going to lead this country to hell in a handbasket.
It took me so long to come to terms with myself.
No one taught me a third option. No one said there's a way to look at yourself truly, not squinting between your open fingers in fear, and not embrace every piece. A way to say, that girl is fine, and I am not going to think about her any further.
I feel I was dealt a double-blow growing up in the church. I was bi, and I was sexual. And as a girl, the Lust Talk was not for me. I was once given a very gentle warning about The Dangers Of Erotica, but most of the time we talked about high school musical or something. The boys talked about porn and how to avoid it and what it means to you. The girls talked about boys.
I don't think I was the only 15 year old girl in my church who had a sex drive, but I certainly felt like it. Mix that together with people saying in what they felt was a safe space things about how gay people are so gross and need to die, and you may begin to see why there was a little closet in my soul that was boarded up, day by day, every time I went to church.
But I grew. And I learned. And I researched. And I realized that women are allowed to want and enjoy sex. That it's okay for me to not think masturbation is sinful. That I really did like girls, and I really did love God, and I had to look at both of those things in daylight and figure out what they meant to each other. I couldn't live two lives. I couldn't put God in the closet while I thought about girls, only to act like it was this sudden deviation that never happened before or since.
The issue I have come across the most in my heart is whether or not homosexual desire is itself sinful. And I have a concise, well thought out answer for that.
I'm just kidding. You should know me better than that.
I'm still sort of searching about that. I've wanted to share this for months, but held off because I don't have easy answers. I've come to realize I may never have them. But here's what I do know. A pornhub search for James Deen is not a less sinful search than one for Sasha Grey (If you know who either of those people are, you are just as much of a dirty dirty sinner as me. I'll pray for you.). Lust is lust. Me being attracted to women is no less sinful than you getting white girl wasted at your stupid christian college. Me being bisexual is no more damaging and misses the mark of perfection no more than my lifelong battle with food and self-image.
Sin means to miss the mark. It means that God hit a bulls-eye and I am somewhere off in the weeds. I am off in the weeds in every way! If only you knew. This is just one of my many ways, yet for some reason people like to act like it makes me less valuable, one of "those people".
I am dating a wonderful, Godly, supportive man. I love him intensely. I am going to marry the crap out of him, and we are going to procreate. I don't think my attraction to women is going anywhere, but I am going to live the life, at least as far as anyone can see, of a heterosexual, God-fearing woman, in a fruitful marriage as the good lord intended. So if you're outraged at my very existence, please understand that I do the best I can, my plans for my life happen to coincide with how you think I should live, and there's not much more than you can ask for. If you desire perfection from me, I will turn right back and ask it of you. Neither of us will ever measure up. Thank God for grace.
OK. So now the weight has been lifted, but I'm not done. I have something else to share.
I have been in your churches all my life. When you spewed bile about "THE GAYS", I heard every word, and every one made a mark on my heart. I have forgiven you, but the scars are still there. I have given you grace as God gave me grace and as I am asking you to give me now.
But I'm sure I wasn't the only not-straight kid in the room. And I might be the only forgiving one. And I might be the only bisexual christian who was fortunate enough to find a soulmate of the opposite sex, relatively early in life. It has been an impossibly hard journey for me, and yet compared to others I know, it has been a walk in the park.
It's a sticky issue. It has been for me. And when I imagine what it would be like to not be attracted to men at all, and grow up in that environment, it hurts my heart. I can't imagine what it would have done to me to be condemned all the time, to have no one talking about a middle ground between heterosexual perfection and homosexual trash.
If you gain nothing from this, I pray that you guard your tongues. I pray more than anything that your hearts become tender to people who are not like you, because your anger doesn't help. Your condemnation is not novel. It is one of a thousand words of pain and hate in an endless pile on some poor kid's back.
Sin is sin. But grace is grace. And grace can cover my sexuality, and it can cover your alcoholism, and it can cover her divorce, and it can cover my road rage. By putting one sin on a pedestal and throwing stones at THOSE PEOPLE, you are doing so much more damage than you realize. Because the effigy of a deviant that you are talking about with such anger might not feel it. But the quiet kid in the room hears you, and knows they are not welcome.
I wish you could see the damage this can cause. I wish I could show you the scars on my heart, but maybe you should look at the scars on my arm instead. I think that if you were to take some time and actually cross the metaphorical tracks, and have an actual conversation with someone who is gay, you would learn a lot. I think you would be surprised by their humanity. I think you would find that they, like you, are just doing their best to navigate this world.
I'm not interested in fighting. I never am. I don't have all the right answers. I never do. But in light of the recent SCOTUS decision, I had to speak up. I have been here for years, listening, suffocating, pretending to understand why you hate THOSE PEOPLE so much. If I were to condense everything I am trying to say into a neat couple of sentences, they would be these:
I am bisexual, and I am here. I love Jesus, and he forgives me for all my sin - sexual and otherwirse. You have hurt me, and I forgive you. Please have compassion in the future. I love you. I hope this doesn't change your love for me.
