Humpty Dumpty Heterosexuals

May 20, 2008

Sometime between writing the first and last line this post ballooned into some humongous albatross of a blog entry. For those of you with a life beyond this blog, which I suspect to lean heavily toward the majority of you, the first couple paragraphs are the real heart of what I intended to say. I won’t pretend all that follows after that is going to be coherent or applicable to the post title, but at least I hope it will be interesting to those who enjoy little tidbits of trivial like I do.

One of the messages that comes at us in a dozen different ways is that God’s original intent was for all people to be heterosexual but somewhere along the way those of us who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual were broken or damaged. To these folks, there’s no such thing as a normal homosexual; only a malfunctioning heterosexual in need of God’s Fix-It Shop. There are those of us who at one time or another have bought into this message, investing massive amounts of energy trying to figure out what made us gay. We question our own life experiences and turn everything upside down and inside out to see if we can find the clues to why we like the girls rather the boys. The internal message is if something caused me to be gay then something can undo it and I can be fixed, cured, or changed and the church provides us with methods for treating our brokenness; Christian counseling, prayers of healing, and ex-gay ministries.

To those who see my sexual orientation as damaged goods, thank you for playing and be sure to collect your consolation prize at the door. That’s my short inside voice only answer because speaking only for a lesbian of one, I’m not a damaged anything. That’s not to say I haven’t had my issues since by virtue of being one human living among a world of humans I’ve had my fair share of being hurts and disappointments but I’ve done the therapy, let go of any of the past that needed to stay in the past, seen the underbelly of my psyche, and can say both gratefully and assuredly, I’m one emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically healthy individual today. Oh yes, and I’m gay. And my hair is blonde (more often than not), my eyes are blue, I’m nearsighted and right-handed. I’m not a defective straight person and in fact there is nothing straight about me; there’s no heterosexual blood flowing through this body. What I am is a perfectly normal gay person. What I’m saying, all that I’m saying, is that from a personal perspective my life doesn’t match the message. Neither does history support the notion that attraction for the opposite sex is the one and only natural and intended inclination for all humanity, and this, my friends where I gracefully position myself on top of my soapbox, waving farewell to those who have to walk their dog and change their laundry while I regurgitate some historical trivia that further messes with this message.

One of the big myths we confront in the area of human sexuality is the notion that heterosexuality is not only the norm, what is most common for sexual orientation, but normative, the standard of correctness for sexual orientation. Growing up surrounded by heterosexuals (those straight people are everywhere!), I’m more than willing to concede that heterosexuality is the predominant orientation but by no means is heterosexuality the exclusive sexual orientation of humanity or heterosexual relationships the ideal model upon which to judge all others.

I’ve already addressed little bits and pieces how human sexuality was understood in ancient Israel and first-century Palenstine under the category of Homosexuality and the Bible in the posts on Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1, and at Corinthians 6:9 and I Timothy 1:9-10. Summarizing, in the ancient world a man who had sex with another man was the same man who went home to his wife and children. The lines between same-sex sexual activity and opposite-sex sexual activity were more than blurry, they overlapped one another. The understanding was that the person who engaged sexually with someone of the same-sex was thought to be someone who had been simply been unable to fully satisfy his sexual appetite with the opposite sex. He wasn’t driven by abnormal sexual passions for another man, but by abnormal sexual passions for more and more sex however he could get it. Understood this way, homo-eroticism was an extension of the norm but not oppositional to the norm. If this sounds confusing, it should because we’re conditioned by our world view and not by that of the ancient world which was literally, a whole other world and culture on to itself.

As separate entities the words homosexuality and heterosexuality and all those words mean to us today simply didn’t exist; not in antiquity, not in the Middle Ages, and not when buffalo roamed freely on the American continent. Leaping ahead centuries to 1901 there was no mention of either in the Oxford English Dictionary although in that same year in Dorland’s Medical Dictionary, heterosexuality is finally included, being defined as, and you’re going to love this, “Abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex.” I just had to empathize that in bold because it’s too precious to miss, but entertainment value aside this definition reflected accurately the societal view of the time that procreation was the primary imperative for sexual activity which meant that sexual attraction for someone of the opposite sex or sensual pleasure as a driving force for sexual intimacy was considered unnatural, aberrant, and a perversion. Does any of this sound familiar?

Homosexuality doesn’t appear until 1909 in Webster’s New International Dictionary. It was defined as a medical term meaning “morbid sexual passion for one of the same sex” and yet in that same year the term heterosexuality is absent. Not until 1923, fourteen years later, does heterosexuality find its way into Websters as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.” As John Katz’s wrote in The Invention of Heterosexuality, “the advertising of a diseased homosexuality preceded the publicizing of a sick heterosexuality.” It wasn’t until 1934 in the Second Edition of Webster’s was heterosexuality lifted from an abnormal state to being viewed normative as “the manifestation of sexual passion for one of the opposite sex; normal sexuality,” while homosexuality in the same volume was defined as “eroticism for one of the same sex.” In regards to heterosexuality, no longer was procreation required as the motivating factor for opposite sex attraction, and now that it was coming to be established as the norm every variance from that norm was judged against it.

I find all that interesting but more than that, I find it serves as a strong witness to the fact that heterosexuality as an ideal model for sexual orientation and homosexuality as an aberrant from of sexual orientation is a relatively new concept. There’s nothing in human history that’s black and white about human sexuality or sexual orientation. That’s the point. Heterosexuality as sexual attraction for the opposite sex without procreation as the intended goal was once considered abhorrent. Now it’s not. Our understanding of human sexuality has changed and so when people hold up heterosexual relationships as a monolith to sexual orientation and intimate relationships, they’re not wielding a truth with the weight of history behind it. They’re holding up the dominant contemporary world view with all it’s prejudices and cultural acceptabilities.

Now wake up and go for a walk. I’m heading out for a four mile stroll myself.

Blog out!

Posted in Gifted by Otherness, Human Sexuality