On the first day of eighth grade, I saw Angelina Smith in chapel, and she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Or have since, really. The way the sun fell on her hair, the way she chatted with her friends, even the way she was wearing her makeup in the I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing-yet way she did made me gawk. A week later, I dreamt we held hands down the hall. That was it.
I knew I was gay by the New Year. Maybe. I didn't know. Did I?
The problem is, my thirteen-year-old mind had a strict dichotomy. Gays like boys and go to hell and good boys like girls and Jesus loves them very much. Mind you, I didn't really know what 'gay' meant other than heathen. The only conversation I'd even overheard about the mysterious 'gay' (outside of boring bible verses I promptly forgot) turned out to be about transsexuals, which is a whole 'nother can of rainbows.
What was happening? Was I gay, or had I liked (like, like-like liked, not just liked) Angelina? I didn't realize what I do now: sexuality is fluid, and many people have instances of not-preferred sex attraction.
As it is now, if I fell for a woman, I would still be cast into doubt. Am I really gay? What have I been doing? Where will I end up? Am I living a lie?
Who am I?
It shouldn't matter, but it does. In our society, you are gay, straight, or maybe bi (which we don't want to talk about, for some stupid reason, unless we pretend that they're 'confused'). It is considered open minded to accept all three, and that is right and good.
But it's better to say they don't exist.
You can love whom you love, regardless of gender. Orientation isn't a switch stuck in the On or Off positions. It's a handful of darts in a dartboard. It's a compass needle slowly edging from side to side. People are attracted to other people, and that's all you can say with much certainty (and that statement itself can be false in some cases).
I mean, really, there are some people who are born the wrong gender. Or sometimes without a definite gender. Yet some people act as though there are categories you can lump people in. As if there are Men and Women and Straight and Gay. And nothing else.
That's idiotic. Is a straight transwoman (born male, likes men, is female) Woman or Man in your ideology and is she Straight or Gay? There's no Biblical or Quranical precedent. So what do the mad zealots say? They act in fear because they don't know what else to do, and they don't know what else to do because they have their categories.
So, in a roundabout way, we come to my point. Sure, I identify as gay, and that is part of who I am. The sex drive is far to strong for sexuality to be a little thing for most anyone. But it's a spectrum. It's subtle. You know what else is subtle? Favorite colors. That shade of blue may be nice, but that one's too purple, and that one's not purple enough. We have very defined opinions on such matters, but do we let those opinions define us? Are there Blue Lovers and Red Lovers (and maybe some Purple Lovers, though that makes us uncomfortable so we pretend they don't exist)?
Of course not.
That is, there are, but no one cares. No one ever feels pressured to live in a Blue Loving way or make sure no one thinks they like Red. Honestly, many people don't know what color they like best, and no one knows why. I tend to despise orange (was I born that way?), but I don't mind what you do with your colors, because I don't care what anyone does with their colors.
So why don't we treat sexuality the same way? Religion has fought that for years, but I think it's clear that that doctrine is dying. It won't be soon, and it won't be easy, but we can begin to heal our inflamed need to categorize and judge. Sure, he likes boys, she likes women, he's a ladies man and she a bad boy magnet, but so what? If we can be friends with whomever we want, why can't whomever we love mean just as little (and just as much)?
So like the colors you like, but don't expect me to paint my room orange. If I do, well that doesn't matter either. And if you develop a new appreciation for red, then you go for it. Whatever floats your boat.
Live with whatever color works.
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