Christianity and same sex desire

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to experience homosexual love, as opposed to just the desire. I don’t tend to write about that side of my sexuality because I just don’t have affinity with bisexual or lesbian women who love other women. It is a circumstance where I sympathise and wish I could empathise.

I have never been able to love women romantically. It is easy for me as a Christian woman to say ‘Well, certainly I have desire for women, but God has quelled much of it in me, and it’s really no big deal to not have that desire as a large part of my life anymore’. It is easy because my desire for women is sexual, and when you have never loved someone of the same sex and hoped to spend your life with someone of the same sex, all that stuff in the Bible about how it’s not allowed is not really a problem for you. It’s just lust, and lust is sinful, whether it’s heterosexual or homosexual. In other words, because I’m only tempted sexually, I can throw my desire for women into the ‘lust’ pot along with my desire for men and resist the whole, uh, stew of sexual temptation. And honestly, in my life, God has taken much of my sexual desire away, save the chaste desire I have for my spouse.

So I struggle with my inability to truly understand what it would mean to be Christian and desire to marry someone of the same sex, to be Christian and love others of the same sex romantically. In a way, my bisexuality creates an entirely different kind of temptation, as I have to resist the belief that everyone *could* be happy with a partner of the opposite sex simply because I still like boobs, but I get along without them just fine. That kind of privilege-laden belief can close one’s heart to another’s sufferings. Being Christian and desiring what the Word says is not allowed is a complicated enough struggle without someone smugly trying to tell you that since their desire is easily quelled, yours could be too.

Granted, I haven’t been that person. But feeling that ‘everyone’s a little bit heterosexual’ is bad enough. And I’m writing even this because I don’t feel that way anymore. I don’t presume that my experience of same-sex desire should or could apply to all Christians who love or lust for same-sex partners. But I have, and did, and that was also sin.

Well, there you are. I’m a Christian who experiences same sex desire from time to time, but in general is not tempted by it, and though I can’t understand same sex loving (rather than desiring), I at least have come to accept that my experience cannot be extrapolated to all Christians with similar desires.

This post was inspired by a blogger who was wrong about something, but got belligerent instead of admitting to it. I just decided to admit to my wrong thing, so here we are.