Closer to Love

I was raised a Christian - not quite born, but raised from a very young age. I was taught to believe that other religions are wrong and that homosexuality is a terrible sin. I believed what other people said - that the Bible preaches against homosexuality, that all other religions are wrong...I was nothing more than a sheep, just like a large majority of American Christians are these days.

I'm not trying to offend anyone here; this is my own opinion and my own process of thinking. But there are a lot of Christians who hardly ever pick up a Bible and actually read it. And, to be honest, I am one of those. I have a hard time picking up my Bible because I struggle with religion in general. In fact, right now I am not a "Christian," as most Americans would describe it. I believe in God and I believe in the Bible. I draw my own conclusions. I am not Catholic or Protestant. I am not Baptist, Methodist, or Lutheran. I'm not even a non-denominational Christian.

I am spiritual. That is all.

I was raised to discriminate. There was something wrong with people who followed other religions. And, while I wasn't given that message word for word, that was the example that I was given. Homosexuality, too, was a sin, and homosexuals were wrong in some way.

Then I went to high school and I realized that believing in a different religion didn't make someone wrong. It just made them different. It wasn't my job to judge them or stay away from them. It was my job to love them and accept them for who they were. And while I did, and still do, believe that there is only one right religion, that does not mean that I have the right to label other people sinful or wrong simply because they believe something different from me. What if I am the one who is wrong and they are the ones who are right? Just because I believe something doesn't make it the truth. I can believe that we don't need oxygen to live, and obviously that would be wrong. It works the same way with religion, in my opinion. And I had no right to judge other people as sinners when I myself am a sinner - I lie, I hurt people, I lose my temper and I yell and I fight. All sin is equal. I can't judge anyone for their sins.

I was taught that homosexuality was a choice and that it was the wrong choice; it was a sin to be homosexual. I believed that, and I did my best to crush certain feelings that I had for a couple of people who were the same sex as me. I was determined to not make that "choice" and sin in that way.

And then I went to college.

I researched birth order in my first semester of college and discovered something that I found quite fascinating. It opened up many doors in my mind that had previously been closed because of what I had been taught to believe all my life. See, there is some evidence that the mother's body see's the male fetus as a threat or an illness because the male fetus has horomones and such that are not normally found in the female body. Therefore, the body's defense systems may attack the male fetus. This could possibly cause homosexuality in men - and it is a perfectly viable explanation. After all, there are other instances in which the mother's body and the fetus don't get along perfectly. But if this were true then homosexuality wouldn't be a choice now, would it?

Imagine that.

All my life I also believed that the Bible condemned homosexuality. I believed that because other people had told me to believe it. And then in my Sophomore year of college I went with a friend to a church that was showing a film that examined biblical evidence concerning homosexuality. While that video didn't convince me to completely turn around and believe that the Bible didn't condemn homosexuality, it did make me think and it did help me to begin to really form my own opinions and stray away from what I had been taught to believe.

By then I had already been toying with the knowledge that I was most likely bisexual. Now, let me explain how this worked. I did not simply decide one day that I was going to like both guys and girls. Do you know that feeling you get when you really like someone? Like, you know a guy and you get this funny feeling when you think about him or you're around him? You like him for his personality; it's not just a "OMG he's sooooooo cute" kind of crush. It's deeper thann that. One day I noticed that there were a few girls that I felt this way for. I had felt similarly for a few guys in the past. I was confused at first because I didn't understand what was happening. I tried to ignore the feelings. They persisted, and eventually I accepted the fact that there was nothing I could do about them. They came without invitation, just as my feelings for certain guys did. It was a physical reaction to begin with, and then when I knew the person better I began to like them for who they were as well.

It wasn't a choice. It just happened. I tried to kill those feelings off somehow, and I failed rather miserably. If anything it caused me pain. so I stopped and I accepted it and I learned to live with it. I became what people call "bisexual," though in reality it can be better described as pansexual, or the ability to love many.

There are two terms that people need to understand the difference between. Sex and gender. Sex refers to one's physical parts - you are male or female based on your genitalia. Gender refers to a social status of some sort (e.g. man, boy, woman, girl). In our country gender is usually perceived as a social manifestation of the sex, but this is more social expectation than anything else. There can actually be a lot of variety in gender because it is abstract, unlike sex which is concrete.

I was so afraid of what my family and friends would think of me if they found out what I was that I confided in my abnormal psychology teacher via the journal that we kept as a class assignment. I told her that I was denying the possibility that I might be bisexual because I didn't want to be labeled negatively by friends and family. She sympathized with me and acknowledged the high cost that I would have to pay if I continued down that path. I also asked her if bisexuality had a basis in neuroanatomy. I would like to share her response with you.

"Yes. In fact, Dr. Perkins. now director of the HAB program, did research on the brains of "gay" sheep. Because sexual orientation occurs on a continuum (rather than just male or female) she refers to 32 sexes, not just three: male, female, and bisexual.
In other words, in the world of intersexed children there are many more normal variations than just boy or girl.
In Kinsey's bipolar scare of exclusive hetero or homo, he indicated that most people are somewhere in between the extremes, with bisexuals occurring closer to the middle. [Very few individuals on the continuum are exclusively hetero or homo, whereas many are bi].
Polyamory iis another way to discuss this issue. Poly = many, amor = love, or able to love many. This term can be used to describe people who are attracted to and 'able to love' more than one narrowly defined class of partner, e.g. just men or just women.
The bonobo, a primate, is considered a good example of naturally occuring (i.e. occuring in nature) bisexuality. They mate with both males and females. They masturbate frequently and even use sex to distract each other from being violent. They literally 'make love not war.'"

This really opened my eyes. Thirty-two sexes? Hard to believe, right? Physically, there's a limited range of sexes - typically just male and female. But when it comes to the mind there are many, many more sexes and a lot more variation. It's normal to be bisexual and love more than one "gender" - in fact, it's similar to being able to love people of different colors or different heights.

I am not wrong. I am not sinful because I can love people. And for me it's not about having sex - I don't want sex with anyone, male or female. I just want to love and be loved, and if I find that with a girl then so be it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

My mind is open to new things. Once I followed the crowd blindly, like a sheep. And then my eyes were opened and I realized that I couldn't let other people tell me what to think or believe. I also realized that I had to be open to alternatives, and when I finally was it made a lot more sense to me. Rather than simply saying that homosexuality was a sin, I was able to look further into it and realize that homosexuality and bisexuality aren't even "choices," as so many Christians put it. It's biological/genetic. If it really is based on the body and not a choice, then how can God punish people for that? To be honest, if He will punish me for having feelings that I have no control over, then He is not the God I have been raised to believe in.

We are all human. I am human. You are human. No matter what you look like, what you believe, or who you love, we are all human, and therefore we are all equal. And to me, that's part of what makes the world beautiful. Discrimination is the abomination, not homosexuality.

There is nothing wrong with me. I am Ashley and I am exactly who I am supposed to be. God made me this way, and I will do whatever good I can with it.

I believe in God. I am bisexual. I am proud.