On Being A Bisexual Christian Woman
“God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another…. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.” – Romans 1:24-27
The weekend after June 26, 2015, the day same-sex marriage was legalized in all 50 states, my church preached an emergency sermon. The pastor, a short, white man with a good but misguided heart, denounced homosexuality and deplored the government for changing the definition of marriage. Several days before, I had heard the term cross-dressing for the first time, used by my parents on our family vacation, to describe some Bostonians. Me, being thirteen and sheltered in a Christian bubble, had no idea what they meant. I only saw people: men, women, and individuals in between, boys holding hands with girls, boys with boys, girls with girls. It bothered me little. Sitting in the pews of our Southern Baptist megachurch, though, squished between my parents, in a yellow dress, I was uncomfortable. As the pastor prattled on about God creating Eve for Adam, not Adam and Steve – which is a poor theological argument, I would later learn– my lips remained sealed like the door to a vault, my uneasiness locked inside.
A few short months later, I would like a girl for the first time. Her name was Macy, and she played bass clarinet in my band class and volleyball. Every class period, I would gaze at her long brown locks, emerald eyes, and defined features from across the room, entranced. Only my thoughts of sin and the abhorrence of homosexuality to God broke the spell. Why am I staring at her? I can’t like girls. I don’t like girls. What are you doing, Kaylie? Liking girls is wrong. You are wrong. Eventually, the crush faded as all middle-school infatuations do, and I liked the popular boys again as did most other girls at my school, confident I was straight and merely fascinated by women’s beauty.
Much to my dismay, my fascination continued and intensified in high school – as did my frustrations with church. I wanted to glimpse women’s bodies in a way I did not with men, and I enjoyed going to museums not only for the art but for the opportunity to see the female form without shame. Art is meant to be appreciated as are young adult novels describing intimate moments between lovers. With my head between the covers of books, I lived a thousand lives, lost in another realm of love and lust, free to be my full self – until my thoughts caught up with me. Why are you enjoying this? This might as well be pornography. God is unhappy with you. This is wrong. You are wrong. The church did little to ease my self-inflicted feelings of perpetual sinfulness. I was never doing enough: reading my bible enough, praying enough, sharing the gospel enough, being perfect enough, though no one could define what “enough” was. Although they claimed God’s love and gift of eternal life did not depend on my goodness, they sure didn’t act like it. As a young woman who liked YA romance novels, attempted to bury her same-sex attraction in a coffin and toss dirt on the grave, and struggled to believe without doubt, I was not enough for my church or God.
“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.” – 1 Timothy 2:11-13
I wanted to accept without question the church’s teachings, this proved a futile task for my skeptical brain. Publicly, I was a faithful follower and diligent Bible study leader; inside, I wrestled like Jacob with the angel. After reading passages restricting women’s leadership in the church, I cried big, salty tears of anger and resentment in the corner of my bedroom where no one could hear. I mourned my future submission to a man and contemplated never marrying to avoid it. Though my mind churned like a duck’s feet furiously kicking under water, I appeared calm and content, the good Christian girl, to my pastor, parents, and peers. As family members described same-sex attraction as a disgusting and perverted way of life at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, I nodded along too scared to ask questions. As they mourned the loss of so-called Christian values in the United States – though no one could define what they were except a list of conservative beliefs – I remained silent, too scared to challenge the status quo. I possessed no explanation for my still developing beliefs, and I did not dare defy the Southern Baptist church.
I entered college, confused and somewhat disillusioned yet convinced being Southern Baptist was the only true way to follow God. Second semester of my first year at Belmont my eyes were opened like Adam and Eve in the garden to other ways of belief. In my honors Engaging the Bible course, my professor instructed us to ask questions, to wrestle with God, even if it leaves us with a limp. Though she only saw me as pixels on her 13-inch computer screen, it was as if she saw into my soul. For the first time, my questions were encouraged and other denominations respected. As we read through the Old and New Testaments, I learned the Bible wasn’t as cut and dry as I was taught. The Bible leaves readers with more questions than answers, and anyone who claims to know without doubt or question what God is communicating deceives themself.
As spring turned to a scorching summer, I moved back to Texas with the knowledge that perhaps women could be pastors; perhaps they were equal to men in marriage and in everything else; perhaps there was more to the Bible than my Southern Baptist church taught. I sat in church uncomfortable like my thirteen-year-old self, squirming inside at the pastor’s words and the way he interpreted the Bible to match his own worldview instead of presenting the whole story. I was hurt. I had trusted my pastor and everyone else at my church who claimed to know the truth, and instead of telling the entirety of it, they told a portion, that which aligned with what they wanted to believe, with what maintained their power.
Emboldened by my new knowledge and frustration at the church, instead of remaining silent at the dinner table, I spoke up – and was quickly shut down. My parents accused me of blaming the church too much for my hurt and defended their – no longer our – church with every ounce of their being. I was no longer holding fast to what I was taught. I was being led astray. I was changing my beliefs to match society. After too many conversations ending in tears and anger at my parents’ unquestioning devotion to the church, I resumed my previous way of being: don’t rock the boat; don’t challenge the status quo; don’t say what you really think. Except, sometimes, I slipped up and would.
I made the mistake of telling my parents I think it’s okay for gay and lesbian people to get legally married sophomore year. The women seated beside us at a restaurant spoke loudly of moving to Nashville together from California. In the car ride back to my apartment, my dad commented on how they were likely gay and declared their relationship disgusting and ungodly. Being tired and not thinking, I replied, “What does it matter?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I wished I could take them back. Anxiety filled my throat at their coming attack, and I sat petrified, attempting to explain that, if straight people can get married, gay people should be allowed to as well. “We wouldn’t like it if Muslims, for example, forced their beliefs onto us and made it law, so why should Christians do it to others?” Within five minutes, my argument was decimated into a pile of mush, and I got out of the car to the words, “You should really think about these beliefs you have, Kaylie.”
“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” – John 15:12
Although I wholeheartedly believed same-sex marriage should be legal, I was uncertain how to process my own “fascinations.” After admitting to my boyfriend, soon to be fiancé, my interest in the female body, he said, “I knew it! You’re bi.” I vehemently denied his assertion, explaining to the best of my ability that I just like the appearance of a woman’s figure but that was where the attraction stopped. He called b.s., and for weeks, the conversation haunted me like an unwanted ghost. I didn’t like women. Did I? “You have always felt more comfortable around women than men,” he explained. “Your supposed fascination is most likely suppressed attraction, and you were jealous after your best friend kissed her roommate – not because you wanted to kiss her but because she kissed a woman, and you never have.” I shrugged, my thoughts swirling like food in a stomach before it is thrown up, staining clothes and splattering all over someone’s life. Words can do that too. Saying, “I’m bisexual” splattered filthy, shameful sin on what I wanted to be my mostly perfect, straight life.
Admitting my sexuality to myself took years. Years of prayer, years of study, years of talking to others and letting go of my preconceived notions of human sexuality and the Bible, years of learning to accept myself as I am, not who I want to be. Each of my fiancé’s points alone does not make me bisexual, but combined they reach for a truth I have denied for years: I have buried these so-called wicked desires in the depths of my soul where I thought light could not shine; I have masked them with words such as “fascination” and “intellectual interest” because I wanted to be the perfect daughter, the perfect Christian. My parents and most others will never know this part of me, as I fear their rejection more than I fear not being my true self. I do not despise them for this or myself for my fear, but I do wish I could say: I’m sorry that I am not the straight, Christian daughter you wanted me to be. I have broken the church’s rules and decided for myself what being a Christian means – loving others and not forcing them into a singular way of belief. I hope you will respect my decision and know I want to do the right thing. Always, I want to do the right thing.
Though I appear on the outside – both to my parents and others who knew me pre-college – to belong in the church of my youth, I am rejected because of who I am and what I believe. I squirm in the pews and bite my tongue each time the pastor makes a homophobic remark. I laugh with cynicism because they don’t realize they are talking about me. On the flip side, though I now recognize my sexuality, I do not feel connected to the LGBTQ+ community like I thought I would. I am distinctly other. Holding a man’s hand, I present as straight, as existing in a category that does not quite fit me. In an act of internalization, I have rejected a community with similar experiences before they can reject me. I have assumed I’m not gay enough, as if qualifiers such as kissing a woman exist to attend Pride or a support group or even say to a peer, “I’m attracted to the same gender, too.”
Most days I feel as if I cannot claim the word “bisexual” as part of my identity. Though I have acknowledged this piece of myself, I am still learning to accept it, and to allow it to sit on the kitchen table with all the other puzzle pieces that make up who I am. Reading about the gay rights movement for the first time a few weeks ago, I saw myself; I saw a history that included me, and I picked up the dusty, stepped-on puzzle piece from the tile floor and placed it with the others. To explain it another way, my sexuality is a skin I am not fully accustomed to. I am still shedding the layer that encourages me to dislike myself, though it will always be part of me in some way, and the layer that says women will never amount to much. I am still stretching my fingertips into a new membrane that lovingly contains all parts of myself and learning to walk, run, live as me – a human being who fully likes women and men and fully loves God.