Bisexuality

[The Mighty Sword]

Brothers and sisters, We can easily lose Xeno to scripture rather than win him with it, as a non-christian he doesn't understand it, please come with gentleness like GOD comes sometimes as a gentle breeze rather than a crashing wave.

[Xeno Dragon]

I apologize for the lack of reply to some of the above posts, but I don't think that some of the replies I would give would be constructive. I'll keep those to myself.

For now, I have to go for the day, but I'll leave you with one more question. If sex outside of marriage, and sex outside of male/female sex is wrong, why is it wrong? I don't understand why doing something consensual, that hurts no one, and is fun, is a bad thing.

Okay, two more questions. God hears all prayers. Sometimes, prayers are not answered. So God chooses which prayers to answer and which to ignore. If I prayed to God to help be become straight, and nothing happened, doesn't that mean that God wants me to be the way I am?

[The Mighty Sword]

I apologize for the lack of reply to some of the above posts, but I don't think that some of the replies I would give would be constructive. I'll keep those to myself.

For now, I have to go for the day, but I'll leave you with one more question. If sex outside of marriage, and sex outside of male/female sex is wrong, why is it wrong? I don't understand why doing something consensual, that hurts no one, and is fun, is a bad thing.

Okay, two more questions. God hears all prayers. Sometimes, prayers are not answered. So God chooses which prayers to answer and which to ignore. If I prayed to God to help be become straight, and nothing happened, doesn't that mean that God wants me to be the way I am?

Prayers are always answered and it's alway one of three answers:

1: Yes

2. No

3. Not right now.

And believe it or not we're not always ready for the prayer to be answered.

[David Taylor]

You can't naturally choose your hair color, your eye color, or your skintone, and I did not CHOOSE my sexuality, it's just THERE.

I chose mine.
I chose to be in a monogamist relationship with one woman in marriage.
My sexuality might entice me to want to be involved in many sexual relationships with many women...but I choose not to do so.

Any action we willfully take is a choice that we ourselves are responsible for making.

You can choose to be bisexual.
I can choose to be sexually active with many women that I find attractive.
It most certainly is a choice. My inclination might be more or less than the next person, so may be yours, but we all have choices.

How is it different?

How is it different in that I choose not to pursue my desires towards multiple people of the same gender, and you choose to pursue desires towards multiple people of both genders?

If I were 'born' to be a cassanova, a jiggalow, a player, an adulterer, whatever you want to call it, yet I choose not to pursue that lifestyle and remain faithful in a monogamist relationship with one woman, how can you say that isn't a choice I have made, over simply saying, I can't help it, I was born that way, so I'll be an adulterer and can't stop myself?

[th1bill]

For now, I have to go for the day, but I'll leave you with one more question. If sex outside of marriage, and sex outside of male/female sex is wrong, why is it wrong? I don't understand why doing something consensual, that hurts no one, and is fun, is a bad thing.

In the case of Fornication (extra-marital sex) it is wrong because the Biblical Definition of marriage is the act of coupling. Every time you have sex you are Biblically, one-flesh.

Okay, two more questions. God hears all prayers. Sometimes, prayers are not answered.

God answers every prayer. Some answers are no and some are yes and then there is the answer, later.

So God chooses which prayers to answer and which to ignore. If I prayed to God to help be become straight, and nothing happened, doesn't that mean that God wants me to be the way I am?

You need to back up and to read my first post to you. God wants you to be strong and to resist sin.

[Amos_with_goats]

....I'll leave you with one more question. If sex outside of marriage, and sex outside of male/female sex is wrong, why is it wrong? I don't understand why doing something consensual, that hurts no one, and is fun, is a bad thing....

In post #12 above... had someone tried to explain to the dog why he should not chase the ball... what do you think his answer might have been?

Some times we do not understand the danger... the peril... maybe just the heart break we are being spared.

I am thankful that there is another way.

[David Taylor]

If sex outside of marriage, and sex outside of male/female sex is wrong, why is it wrong?

I believe the Bible alone is truly God's Word given to man about how we should live our lives. Therefore for me, it is wrong, because God tell us sex is to be contained within the confines of marriage between a husband and a wife.

I don't understand why doing something consensual, that hurts no one, and is fun, is a bad thing.

God determines what is bad and what is not. Since I have a biblical world view, and believe God does exist, and believe God is my Creator, and believe God has manifested His will towards us through the words of the Bible, I can know that just because something might be fun for the moment, if it is against God, it is a bad thing. The wiles of the world offer many enticing and fun things that ultimately, but if God exists and the Bible is truly His words written for us, I'm gonna choose (there's that choose word again) to be faithful to His teachings and His will for my life above fun and worldly things He specifically told me to avoid.

Okay, two more questions. God hears all prayers. Sometimes, prayers are not answered. So God chooses which prayers to answer and which to ignore.

Ultimately there are three answers to every pray.
Yes.
No.
Later.

God isn't our puppet or genie to answer us on our beck-and-call. If our heart isn't in a right spirit, if our intentions are wrong, if we are not sincere, and any number of other things, the answer may likely be 'no' or 'later'. Imagine how much more chaotic the world would be if God was our genie, and prayer was the mechanism for everyone to get their wishes fulfilled immediately. Scary. Prayer, on the other hand, is really just a mode of communication between us and God whom we serve and follow and want to share our lives with in a deep, personal relationship with.

If I prayed to God to help be become straight, and nothing happened, doesn't that mean that God wants me to be the way I am?

Of course it doesn't. Perhaps instead, God wants you to first recognize the sin in your life and to turn from it and repent, to accept and acknowledge that it is truly wrong, and that you really deep down want to change....and whe He sees this within your heart....He will then proceed to help you. Right now, it seems, though based on your prior posts, that you're not really wanting to do so at a deep, serious level...but moreso have quipped off a prayer of the mouth but not truly of the heart to see if God will jump when you bark at him. Not trying to be callous with you, just trying to speak honest and freely on this. I truly believe any sin God will help us overcome if we truly have a deep desire to change. Are you willing to choose to be monogamist for a month to see how God will respond to you? How about a year? How about 20 years? Now that is a display of true, deepdown sincerity and intent of your heart.

Fundamentally though, most of us....no all of us, without God truly leading and guiding us in our lives, are too selfish to overcome most of the sins that plague all of us.

Look forward to seeing your replies later when you get back online. Hope we can help you find what you're truly looking for.

[Youssarian]

I don't know if I can be of much help here, and maybe what I'm about to say has been said before... but... here I go.

A few years ago, I had to question my sexual orientation. I am straight presently, but during that time I honestly was not sure. I thought I could have been bisexual. I had some thoughts that were not what you would expect a straight male to have and I did some things with my friends that would not be associated with a straight male (nothing explicit in either case, mind you). For three days, I actually classified myself as bisexual. Then I was like, "Eh, I'm straight, just weird." (I'm a generally weird person.)

I have a female friend who is Christian who is likely still in a silent struggle with her bisexuality. She had a girlfriend who died suddenly after they had been together for 2 years. That was probably when she was, say, 14 or 15. But I figure she has make a choice to stop this behavior because she has made every effort to be straight. (And it's worked, because she recently had a rather short relationship with a male friend.)

We're all wired to be sexual creatures. Let me tell you something that I hope will help. I don't struggle with bisexuality, but I do struggle with lust. For me, it is certainly one of my biggest problems. It would be natural for me to indulge in it every moment of every day, but I don't because I know that it is ungodly.

[Xeno Dragon]

I want to thank you all for your answers, but I don't think this is going to work. You all understand the bible, but you clearly don't understand what it's like to be a non-straight individual. I don't think I'm going to find any real help here, at least not on this issue. You have to remember that this is not the first time I've tried to confront this through Christianity. I've heard most stock answers before, and frankly, I'm not seeing anything new here.

I like being who I am, I just want to find out if Christianity will work for me. My scientific mind tells me that there may not be an afterlife, so if this life is all we get, I don't want to waste it; i want to have fun and enjoy it!

I'm no expert, so forgive me if I'm crossing some line somewhere, but to me, If I don't hurt anyone, and if I don't steal anything, and I go out of my way to help others, then no kind and loving god would turn me away for falling in love with someone who happens to have been born with a Y chromosome. I live a good and moral life, and always have, even without religion. I don't want to make waves, I just want to find what's right for me. I'm sorry, but I don't think I can be a true christian if I can't even choose who can and can't be my family, who can and can't be the love of my life.

I know this isn't something everyone can do, because empathy is a skill few people have anymore. But just try to imagine a world where straight people were treated like gays are now. You fall in love with someone and every moment of your life you have to endure the spite and ridicule of every person you meet, every sect of society. You're constantly told you're evil, unnatural, a sinner, and that you're going to burn in Hell. You try to change, but you can't, no matter what you do. You try to pretend, but it leaves your life washed-out and hollow, you feel sick and wrong. So you spend your life with this person you love, despite the way everyone treats you for it. But you can't really, because society has made it illegal. You can't visit your love in the hospital, even if they're dying. Perhaps moths or years of pain and torture they have to endure, and they are forced to do it alone. If they do die, their funeral would be picketed by hundreds of people celebrating the fact they're dead, and screaming that you'll soon join them in Hell.

Why do they treat you like this? These people who never knew you, and will never know you? Simple. They read an old book that said to love your neighbor, and somehow saw that as, "Destroy any shred of potential happiness someone different than you might chance to experience." Now imagine you're still in this situation, and you approach the majority for help. What do they have to say? Mainly, they claim to know more about you, your body, your mind, and your life than you do. They tell you that you made a choice you never made, and demand that you undo your mistake at once.

All I want to do is live a peaceful life, free to love whomever I love. Why does that anger or displease God? I cannot worship any god that behaves that way. It's not that I will not, I simply CAN NOT.

Again, I thank you for your replies. I know you're trying to help, but I think I'm going to need to find it elsewhere.

[tango]

Xeno, before you head off perhaps I could ask you to consider a few things the other way around.

If there is no afterlife and when you've had your "three score years and ten" you become food for the worms and nothing more, what difference does it make whether you have fun and enjoy it or not?

Whoever you are attracted to is not a good reason for people to show you spite and ridicule. That's like trying to change someone by beating them down, and it very rarely works. It's like I mentioned in a previous post - you may or may not get much choice in who you are attracted to but you do get a choice how you respond to that attraction. I've seen some very attractive young women in my neighbourhood (as a heterosexual man I could argue that I can't help the fact I find them attractive) but don't sleep with them because it wouldn't be the right thing to do. The attraction doesn't go away, but I choose what to do about it.

I can't understand what it's like to be attracted to men, simply because it's not something I've ever experienced. But I can say that the consequences for you indulging your attraction are the same as the consequences for me if I were to indulge my attraction to other women. You can't marry a gay lover, but what about heterosexuals who never meet someone they marry? How is their situation (no marriage, therefore no sex) any different to yours?

With respect, your comments about how God behaves suggests you want to meet God but on your terms. If I might use an analogy to put that another way that I hope will make some sense.

If you have incurred a monstrous financial debt that you can never repay you may spend the rest of your life working just to repay whatever portion of it you can. You're basically a slave now, you get no money to call your own, no time to call your own, no chance to do anything that you wanted to do, your entire time is spent either sleeping or working to pay off this debt. Now imagine someone with the means to pay that debt offers to pay it in full. At a stroke you're a free man, you no longer have to spend your entire life toiling for someone else. The key question here is simple - would you meet this person on their terms or insist on your own terms?

[daughter]

Hi Xeno.

Just to let you know, when I was bisexual I didn't see it as a choice either. I couldn't help myself, so I do know how you feel. I even know what it's like to have a priest tell you to pray about it, I know that didn't work. (When I was first involved with another woman I confessed to a priest, who tried to help but couldn't.)

When I became Christian I remember being shocked when I next saw a beautiful woman I'd lusted after. I'd been very embarassed for a while, because everytime I saw her I'd blush and stammer. (She was my husband's doctor.) Well, she walked into the ward, and I mentally prepared myself for the onslought of embarassment, and nothing happened. It's the oddest sensation I've ever had. I was able to look at her, know she was beautiful, and not have those images or feelings. It's been a great liberation to me.

Looking back I know how I came to be bisexual, and it was a pretty tangled mess which I'm happy to discuss with you, if you're happy to listen. But I just wanted you to know that one's sexual orientation isn't set in concrete. I know the current wisdom is that we're "born like that", but my experience has been different.

God bless.

[Xeno Dragon]

If there is no afterlife and when you've had your "three score years and ten" you become food for the worms and nothing more, what difference does it make whether you have fun and enjoy it or not?
EVERYTHING! If this is all I have, it would be lunacy to do anything BUT enjoy every moment of it.

You can't marry a gay lover, but what about heterosexuals who never meet someone they marry? How is their situation (no marriage, therefore no sex) any different to yours?
If I never meet anyone I want to marry, that would be applicable to me. If I do, then it is not.

If you have incurred a monstrous financial debt that you can never repay you may spend the rest of your life working just to repay whatever portion of it you can. You're basically a slave now, you get no money to call your own, no time to call your own, no chance to do anything that you wanted to do, your entire time is spent either sleeping or working to pay off this debt. Now imagine someone with the means to pay that debt offers to pay it in full. At a stroke you're a free man, you no longer have to spend your entire life toiling for someone else. The key question here is simple - would you meet this person on their terms or insist on your own terms?
I don't understand your point. I have done nothing wrong and owe nothing to anyone. No one is coming to free me from a debt, they (God, Christians, the Bible, whomever) are asking me to obey them and only them, basically become their slave, and in return, I might one day see paradise. But only after I'm dead. As far as I can tell, there is nothing after death, and I don't want to obey someone I find to be immoral and/or hateful, so this seems to be a terrible deal for me, especially if it means I must deny my sexuality. If it's there, it's part of me, and the Bible says not to change what God has given you. So if I need to change in order to become a Christian, that would mean I would need to sin. Even if I don't see it as sin, I see it as being just as immoral, and just as bad an idea as having a sex change.

[Xeno Dragon]

Daughter, If what you say is true, then you are very different from me. My sexuality is not something I can brush away or ignore. Trust me, I've tried. As a teenage boy, in middle and high school, being ridiculed and bullied and beat up for being this way, OF COURSE I tried to change! I would have done anything just to be normal, to make them stop hurting me.

Now, I've grown a tougher skin. I can handle their nonsense, and have friends and family who accept me as I am, no matter what that means. If the people who love me don't care, and I live a good and helpful life, why would God sentence me to Hell? I didn't do anything wrong, I'm just being the person I was made to be. Expecting me to change is like breeding a puppy to be an outdoor/hunting dog, and then keeping it locked in a garage, punishing it for doing anything other than sit, play dead, and roll over. It can happen, but it's torture. It's unhealthy and evil and abusive. How can God ask me to do that? He knows that I cannot, and will not. So asking me to do it is highly illogical.

[daughter]

Hi Xeno.
I didn't brush away or ignore my sexuality... and I am not saying that everyone who becomes Christian is delivered of those feelings. Just that in my case I was, for which I thank God. To be honest, if I was a stronger person God might have allowed me to continue battling that lust... He knows how very weak I am, perhaps that's why He removed it.

Regarding the ridicule and bullying at school, I did go through that. When I was about fifteen I had a best friend who was female. It was obvious to everyone but me that I had romantic feelings towards her. I didn't understand myself, and when it dawned on me how I was thinking about her I was devastated. It was like the end of the world. Of course other children at school were merciless once my secret was out, and my friend in order to protect herself had to join in. Life was terrible, at the time I thought I was going mad. But I must be honest, if nobody had put the thought in my head that my genuine love of my friend was sexual, I don't think I'd have thought of it. I do believe it is possible to love another without sex coming into it. The sexual aspect of my friendship was something that was imposed on me, and I accepted it at the time because I knew no better. My feelings were so strong, my hormones were all over the place... they are at that age. And I was impressionable.

When I went to university things got easier, but worse, if you know what I mean. I was able to indulge myself, and I didn't get bullied for it. I had a relationship with a woman who decided that she could be faithful to me if her infidelities were only with other men. This was a very painful time in my life, but I believed I was in love, and tried to make things work. Of course, it didn't work, and I met my first husband, who was very titillated by my sexuality, and he fed my addiction by asking about my fantasies. He even got my ex girlfriend to stay over sometimes. It was a horrible situation, and I felt degraded and abused, all the while thinking that I was "having fun."

My second husband was a completely different man. He knew about my attraction to other women, but didn't pander to it. He loved me just as I was, and when I tried to return to form he told me simply that he didn't want to think about anyone but me when we were together. He loved me, he didn't need to fantasise about anyone else. That was a jaw dropper for me. I didn't know a man could be like that. I started to feel guilty that when we together I'd have filthy thoughts in my head, that I wasn't being faithful in my mental life, though I was in my physical life.

When I became Christian I didn't "shrug off" my sexuality... it just simply changed. I was able to be with my husband and love him simply for himself, which is a gift I now cherish, since he died a year and a half after I was saved, five months after he was saved. The fact that God finally blessed me with a Christian marriage, and with a sight of what that union can be like, is something unutterably beautiful, and not something I can describe, sadly.

All I can say is that God created marriage as a sacrament, as a sign of a deeper spiritual truth. Although sex is "fun", there's so much more to it than that. When I was with my girlfriend I thought that sex was always better with your own gender, because you know how they feel. I honestly thought that women made better lovers for women. When I met my second husband, and when we were together without my "ghosts" coming to bed with us, I discovered that giving yourself up to someone Other, someone different from yourself, is spiritually very different from homosexual activity. Loving Another in that way is a leap of faith, and a leap of love, and in retrospect my homosexual adventures were a very shabby distraction from the real thing.

[tango]

If there is no afterlife and when you've had your "three score years and ten" you become food for the worms and nothing more, what difference does it make whether you have fun and enjoy it or not?
EVERYTHING! If this is all I have, it would be lunacy to do anything BUT enjoy every moment of it.

I'm just thinking that if you've got but a few years between not existing and not existing it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference how you spend that brief flicker of time. If you're having fun now or having an awful time, in a few short years it's all over and there's nothing to show one way or the other how you lived your life.

You can't marry a gay lover, but what about heterosexuals who never meet someone they marry? How is their situation (no marriage, therefore no sex) any different to yours?
If I never meet anyone I want to marry, that would be applicable to me. If I do, then it is not.

With respect, we're already moving into theoretical situations of what might be. It's very easy (and equally regrettable) for Christians to focus on the sins associated with homosexuality as if they were an abomination in a class all of their own. It's very easy to focus on sins committed by other people, especially when those other people are in a place we can't understand. Like I said before, I simply can't imagine being attracted to men in that way but there's no point pretending I'm perfect - the fact my desires are aimed towards women doesn't mean I can't cross the line into sinfulness, at that sin is ultimately no different whether the object of desire is male or female.

If you have incurred a monstrous financial debt that you can never repay you may spend the rest of your life working just to repay whatever portion of it you can. You're basically a slave now, you get no money to call your own, no time to call your own, no chance to do anything that you wanted to do, your entire time is spent either sleeping or working to pay off this debt. Now imagine someone with the means to pay that debt offers to pay it in full. At a stroke you're a free man, you no longer have to spend your entire life toiling for someone else. The key question here is simple - would you meet this person on their terms or insist on your own terms?
I don't understand your point. I have done nothing wrong and owe nothing to anyone. No one is coming to free me from a debt, they (God, Christians, the Bible, whomever) are asking me to obey them and only them, basically become their slave, and in return, I might one day see paradise. But only after I'm dead. As far as I can tell, there is nothing after death, and I don't want to obey someone I find to be immoral and/or hateful, so this seems to be a terrible deal for me, especially if it means I must deny my sexuality. If it's there, it's part of me, and the Bible says not to change what God has given you. So if I need to change in order to become a Christian, that would mean I would need to sin. Even if I don't see it as sin, I see it as being just as immoral, and just as bad an idea as having a sex change.

I fear you're misquoting the idea of not changing what God has given us. The Bible is clear on the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. I could argue that my makeup includes the desire to sleep with young attractive women, the desire to get drunk, party all the time, to "live fast" in whatever sense of the term takes your fancy. None of that changes the fact that following God does require us to put those things aside and become a new creation. The good news is that when we accept Jesus we start to change from the inside outwards. Change from the inside works - it changes us so that in many cases we just don't want to do the same things we did before. Attempting to force change from the outside doesn't achieve anything.

Ultimately if what you're looking for is for people to say that continuing in a bisexual or homosexual lifestyle is perfectly OK, that "if it feels good, do it" or whatever, you're not going to get that here. If you've got a specific idea of what answer you want to hear and won't accept anything else, then there's little point posing the question in the first place. If I might point you towards the example of when Jesus was presented with a woman "caught in the act of adultery" we can see how he handled the situation:

Joh 8:3-11 NKJV Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, (4) they said to Him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. (5) Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?" (6) This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear. (7) So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first." (8) And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. (9) Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. (10) When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, "Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?" (11) She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said to her, "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more."


We can see that the religious leaders of the day wanted to stone her - the law of Leviticus made clear that she was to be stoned (it also required that the man also be stoned, which they had apparently overlooked). Jesus' invitation that whoever had no sin was to throw the first stone was very telling - none of us is sinless, so none of us has the right to throw that first stone. But we can also see the other side of this at the end of the passage, where Jesus said "go and sin no more". In other words it's not a free pass to go and committ adultery again, but a clear instruction that she wasn't to keep doing it.