The Outliers - Part II

(Part I was posted on October 5, 2011. Click here to go to Part I)

I married when I was 18, and it wasn't a have to case. As I have said before, I thought that marriage would be the end of male/male sex for me. I had always assumed it was just a substitute for real sex with a woman and an outlier that would vanish with marriage. That turned out not to be the case.

Luckily, I was so busy building a career and raising a family in the first couple of decades I could handle the forbidden desires for sex with men that tormented me, mainly in my dreams at night by just putting them aside. I didn't have time for them other than in my dreams. In those pre internet years I thought I was the only married man alive that had such desires, so I had a powerful reason to put them aside.

By the time I was in my late 40's, the internet and the open sexual communication it allowed had let me in on a big secret. My male/male sexual desires were just another sexual outlier and a fairly common one at that. I certainly wasn't alone.

During my late 40's and early 50's I was able to overcome the guilt and pain that had resulted from my realization I was bisexual. That is such a simple sentence to write. It was not such a simple thing to do. Through conversation with other guys. and through study, a great deal of study, I found bisexuality is just one form of normal human sexual expression. Like most other things in life, it presents some challenges, but with a little bit of effort and an open mind, one can meet the challenges.

I had once begged God to take away my desires for male/male sex. The time eventually came when I would not have wanted to give up the desires even if I could. I came to recognize them as part of what makes me me. Over the years, I've become more and more convinced bisexuality is not really that much of an outlier.  In fact, bisexuality, for men at least, is the biological norm, I believe. I think is how most men are biologically wired. It is  only our homophobic society and the homophobic religion which is a significant influence on supposed societal norms, that inhibit men from expressing this biological norm in greater numbers. But even with the influences of society and religion, the majority of men have at one time or the other had a male/male sexual experience. It is not the outlier, it is thought to be.

I had so much pain and guilt about my bisexuality as a young adult, I have made it my avocation to help as many guys as I can to avoid, or at least mitigate, pain and guilt over their bisexuality or homosexuality. For more than a decade now, I have had the privilege of helping a number of men to do just that.

But my avocation is more than just helping guys to get beyond the pain and guilt. It is to help them understand, truly understand. I don't think most men do, even now. Wives who catch their husbands in a sexual situation with another man more often than not react with revulsion, anger and a sense of ultimate betrayal. Some women have even said, they would have rather caught him with another woman, at least they could have competed with that. Women often ask, why did he do this to me, why did he ever get married? Why didn't he tell me? Some seek an apology, but no apology could ever be composed which would sooth their anger and sense of rejection.

Within all this reaction, I believe is the evidence of the misunderstanding that both men and women are functioning under. To me the question is, what was he to have said? In reality, about the only thing he could have said at the time he married was, I'm a man. The reality is, back then, when the seeds of this tragedy were being sewn, he didn't have a clue of what he was. Women think they could at least compete with another woman. I submit that in the case of a bisexual husband, they don't have to compete at all. Their husband loves them and has no desire to harm his marriage in any way. He is simply trying to live life as he is compelled to live it. And his sexual relationship with the other man is really not primarily a sexual relationship at all. It is a bonded friendship for which men are hard wired.

Unfortunately, most men do not understand all this either. I am really concerned that even in the openness of the current era, some guys are going to get caught up in all the media hype and all the religious bullshit and self-identify as homosexual when they are in reality not homosexual at all. Their desires for other men are not so much sexual desires as they are desires for the deep male bonds for which men are biologically predisposed and which over the last 150 years or so, our society, has increasingly denied them.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not denying that some men are homosexual. Of course they are. I just think that in the future that is going to be less and less a problem for married women because with the increasing openness and acceptance of homosexuality, fewer men will enter into ill advised marriages.

However, men will continue to marry (at least I assume they will, numbers of marriages are down considerably) and men will continue to need, long for and seek out intimate bonds with other men. Sometimes these bonds will, in part, be expressed in sexual ways. There is simply nothing for such men to apologize for. He can't apologize for being a man, and he shouldn't feel guilty about being a man either.

Frankly, I have a problem, as do the wives who find their husbands are having sex with other guys, with men who are sexually active with their wives, but are also carrying on in multiple promiscuous encounters with other men. That is wrong on so many levels. But my contention is, even in all this sexual acting out these men are not really finding what they are looking for and the acting out is actually exacerbated as they more and more desperately try to find what it is that will satisfy this thing inside them. I submit that in many cases, maybe most cases, the thing these guys are looking for is an intimate bonded friendship with another man. A friendship in which they can let everything hang out, their fears, their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations and hell, even, once in a while, their cock.

But men shy away from these types of friendships because they have been denied them so long that, as a culture, we have forgotten how they are defined. As one begins to develop a friendship he begins to have feelings for the friend. Left to its natural course these feelings will deepen, but American men don't allow that. At the first sign of "feelings" they are out of there. They have never been told that they can have feelings for another guy, even love another guy, and not impact their love for their wife in any way whatsoever. In fact, when I talk to guys who are really into their buddies, they invariably tell me that their marriages have improved, not deteriorated. The reason for this, I'm convinced is that for the first time in their adult lives, they are fulfilled and happy. They are living life as it was meant to be lived by adult males.

I have found is there is no one answer that fits everyone, but I am convinced that what I have outlined above is the answer for many guys. Each person, though dealing with essentially the same problem, faces somewhat different challenges in somewhat different circumstances. The good thing is, in my experience, almost every guy can be helped to develop a more positive view of his bisexuality or his homosexuality. And guys can certainly be helped to better manage their bisexual feelings and desires.

For some married homosexual men, it takes the will to admit mistakes and start again outside marriage to a woman. It's not an easy thing to do, but it is a doable thing. I know several men personally who have not only done it, but are happy for the first time in their lives because they have done it. They have embraced the outlier in their sexual lives and found happiness.

For married bisexual guys, the situation can be more complex because, more often than not, bisexual guys value their marriage, love their wife and family and need their buddy. Even when they come to some sense of being ok with all of it, there is the nagging question of what to tell or not tell their wives. Even here, my experience has taught me there is no perfect or standard answer. Keeping one's bisexuality a secret is not always the best answer. Telling one's wife about something she has no chance of understanding is not always the best answer either. 

While I personally happen to be a person of faith. I'm not dogmatic and I don't see the world the way fundamental Christians see it. Throughout my life I have had close friends and acquaintances who are either agnostic or atheist. I feel I understand agnosticism and atheism. There was a better than even chance at one point in my life that I would embrace agnosticism, if not atheism myself. Strangely enough, had it not been for my bisexuality, I'm almost sure that would have been the case.

It was through rigorously studying religion and faith to try to deal with the intersection of my faith and my bisexuality that I really discovered the truth about faith that even most devout modern Christians miss. Even more strangely, I came to realize many agnostics are closer to God in the way they see the world than are many Christians. That's not a finding original to me. A careful reading of the Bible will lay out rather clearly to anyone who doesn't have an agenda that Christ himself found the same thing to be true more than 2000 years ago.

Over the last almost two decades, the saddest guys I have ever encountered are those guys who are devout Christians who simply cannot come to terms with their guilt over their bisexuality. Even worse are those guys who are not particularly devout; but who, nevertheless identify as nominal Christians and choose this one so called sin to get up tight about.  In either case, these guys really sadden me. Somewhere along the line, they failed to grasp what almost everyone else has grasped in the classroom of life, human sexual expression is an outlier. Almost no one lives out their sexual lives within the boundaries they publicly espouse. Society itself sets norms that are not real norms. That doesn't mean what people do is always ok, but it does mean it's bad when an individual becomes chronically unhappy or worse, even suicidal over something most people do, have done or have thought about doing.

When it comes to sex, whatever one's urges, they are almost impossible to resist; and the more one resists them, the more likely he is to eventually do something really over the top that will lead to big trouble. It is the guy resisting, rather than accepting and managing his urges that goes on unsafe sexual binges then crashes into sickening guilt and then recycles back up into another binge in a never ending cycle of self destruction. It is these guys who get caught in dragnets in public parks and adult book stores or get caught trying to buy sex from some young man on the street.

There is something wrong when a nominal Christian makes himself suicidal over something that even Christian pastors are doing frequently. And in this day and time, everyone is aware that even nationally known evangelical pastors are not immune to their same sex sexual urges. The ones that have been outed on national television are well known. These were guys who preached one thing, but lived another. The sexual urge is simply very hard to deal with and when you are trying you best to act like you don't even have an urge, its going to kick your ass. These guys are more than likely to get caught up in the cycle described in the paragraph above and many of them end up getting a public ass kicking. 

In addition to the nationally known pastors are the ones I have personally come to know. There are many. These men are just men. They put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us. When it comes to dealing with their sexuality, they have no better tools for dealing with it than do the rest of us. If anything, they are hampered more than the rest of us because society puts them in a special category of men who are supposed to be above reproach. Fortunately, the ones I know personally have done what ordinary bisexual men do. They learn to accept that they did not make a choice to be bisexual, and they manage their bisexuality as discreetly, and safely as they possibly can as a discrete part of their lives.

None of this means all restraint should be cast away, it shouldn't. The world is much too dangerous for that sort of thing. One should exercise caution and a measure of restraint and moderation in all parts of his life, but he should live his life.

I am convinced one does not choose his sexuality. It comes as part of the package that is oneself.  That means one is duty bound to make the most of it, not spend his life in fear, shame and guilt over it.

It is a particular shame that the face of modern Christianity has become that of the Radical Christian Right whose message to the world is, "God is going to get you." It is a particular shame because:

1. it is true, and
2. most people know it isn't true, including many who preach it.

Only a few outliers take the message to heart and torture themselves with the pain and guilt that results from their urges. The rest just go about their business. They may have a few regrets and a few pains of conscience; but for the most part they just carry on trying to do the best they can, living the live they were handed, playing the hand the were dealt.

No one bothers to explain to these outlying people who take it all too seriously and too personally that if "anything" depends on "any human" being good, we're all screwed, because no one can be good enough. We're all human. We all error. And if by chance someone does explain to these outlying Christians, who take it all too seriously, that redemption comes through grace and not through being good, they refuse to believe it.

In a lot of ways, I have come to see radical fundamental Christianity as very much akin to the boogie man that is used to scare young children into being good. "God is going to get you," is just the adult version of that. You may be surprised to know the thought didn't originate with me. It is at least 2000 years old and can be found attributed to Jesus himself in the 23rd Chapter of Matthew, verse 15. The truth is, religion itself has nothing whatsoever to do with God or sin or being good. Religion has everything to do with power and the ability of one class of people to control the masses. Again, not my words. Read the whole 23rd Chapter of Matthew. It was that way 2000 years ago. It's still that way. Religion is used to control people and get them to do ones bidding. Those who strap bombs to themselves and murder innocent people are religious people. Those who preach that God hates fags and who look down their noses at gay couples are religious people too.

The Bible make it very clear redemption has nothing to do with religion or goodness. It is love that brings redemption. But because Grace makes it appear a person can do anything he wants and get off scott free, people including many Christians deny the Grace of God or put conditions on it.

It's not that a person can do whatever he wants at all. One doesn't have to wait until some after life to be punished for his sins and shortcomings. One who chooses to lead a life that is without limits, without moderation and without regard for others will be punished in this life quite naturally. A price will be paid for such behavior.  Much of the pain and depravation of the present world-wide recession is the product of simple yet pervasive greed and avarice on the part of those in high places as well as those in low places. Those in high places set out to provide material things for those who could not afford them on the pretext of doing a good thing, but actually doing it to enrich themselves. Those in low places accepted material things they could not really afford and mortgaged their future. When the bubble built of greed and avarice popped, all were affected but those in high places withstood the effects of the burst much better than those in low places who have been left without jobs, without homes and without hope. God didn't bring this pain and hurt on us. We brought it on ourselves.

A person who is not willing to be introspective, thoughtful and sedulous enough to know himself and to prepare himself to lead the life he was meant to be live will find himself on a difficult path, not in the some after life, but in this life.

Bisexuality is real. It's not a choice. That means it is a natural thing which does not automatically exclude a bisexual person from living a happy and productive life. The person simply has to meet the challenge. Many men have done just that. These men do not have all the answers. Their choices about how they decide to handle their sexuality, even when done with the greatest care, if unlikely to leave free from pains of conscience.  But in what area of human endeavor do we have all the answers? In what area of human endeavor does not even our best attempts to do good not leave unanswered questions and misunderstood intent? In what area of  human endeavor is everyone of one accord? What song do we all gladly join together in singing?

Those of us who are men of faith believe each and every one of us was given a set of gifts and that we are meant to serve ourselves and our fellow men with those gifts. Bisexuality and homosexuality are two of a list of thousands upon thousands of gifts that are distributed among mankind.

Those who are not men of faith, more often than not, believe the same thing. They believe fate brings us to a time and place with innate skills which are meant to serve ourselves and serve mankind to make life a little better for all.

The result is the same no matter the origin or the impulse to serve. In the end, even the outliers have a way of contributing.

Jack Scott