I wanted to have sex. I just didn’t want the guilt and repression that came with it.
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“What’s your sexual orientation?”
She posed the question plainly. With her casual tone of voice, she might as well have been asking how I liked my eggs. As a heavily repressed, heavily closeted evangelical, I sized her up. There were no narrowed eyes, no pearls clutched as she scrolled through the questionnaire. This caseworker didn’t seem the judgmental type.
- Still, better safe than sorry. I rattled off the response I always gave when faced with this common inquiry.
“I’m asexual. So I don’t like guys or girls in a… um… sexual way.” I avoided eye contact and waited for her to skip to the next intake section.
“Alright, got it. Moving along…”
I exhaled. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath.
This exchange happened nine months ago. I’ve since stepped away from the stringent sexual purity values of mainstream Christianity (along with questioning a ton of the other teachings that were used to brainwash me from an early age). I’ve also ceased choosing “not to act on my homosexual desires.”
- I was raised Catholic. Around the age of 21, I converted to evangelicalism. Neither religion is known for championing sex positivity. Especially in conservative, rural small towns.
The topic of sex and my sexuality had always made me deeply uncomfortable. Throughout my whole life, I learned that both subjects should make me squirm. Up until adulthood, that message came through deafeningly loud and crystal clear.
I couldn’t even escape the negativity surrounding sex in discussions and appointments with my own doctor. When I was 21, I went in for a physical exam after being raped by a distant acquaintance. My primary care provider at the time spent our visit stressing the importance of preserving my virginity. Yes, I had been raped, but my doctor told me it “didn’t count” as tarnishing my purity.
She expressed some pity for me, but her heart really went out to those who didn’t save themselves for marriage. As a “good girl,” sitting in her office, I had the misfortune of gaining access to her judgmental view of twentysomethings who chose to be “promiscuous” by sleeping with their boyfriends.
Yes, I had been raped, but my doctor told me it “didn’t count” as tarnishing my purity.
These “young girls,” as she put it, were all allegedly straight. The notion of homosexuality was a “silly fad” to her. I didn’t feel safe telling her that my abusive boyfriend at the time was having sex with my body against my will every night. I knew she would question whether it was really sexual assault, since I didn’t report it and I was still with him. I couldn’t open up to her about my sexual orientation, either.
I know now that I should be able to be as transparent with my health care provider as possible. But this idea of shame around sex and sexuality was so normalized to me at the time that I didn’t even bat an eye. Even though it came from my own doctor, not a pastor.
The Christian church keeps those of us raised as females in the dark on all things related to sex and sexuality. It’s easier to control us when we’re uninformed and childlike in our understanding of both. We won’t run from abusive men or question whether we want a choice in reproductive rights; we’ll regurgitate rhetoric and reject feminism even though it would help us.
The way the church speaks, you’d think we remain teenagers for our whole lifespan. We go from running every decision by our father to submitting to our husband. Strong female independence has no place in the traditional side of church.
Not only is it considered unholy to have sex before marriage, it is implicitly unholy to talk about the great gift of sex that God gives us as womxn with anything but embarrassment. Some male pastors, on the other hand, flaunt how steamy their sex lives with their wives are. They broadcast it at the pulpit in front of their entire congregation — even when it clearly makes their wives feel uncomfortable and exposed.
- Some middle-aged Christian woman, though they themselves have several biological children and have had sex at least a handful of times, perpetuate this view by nervously tittering at the subject of sex. It’s not enough to “save yourself for marriage.” You also have to keep up the appearance of virginal ignorance and purity in public while satisfying your husband behind closed doors.
Another roadblock to a well-informed understanding of human sexuality was the fact that my sexual orientation was not viewed as “healthy” from a spiritual standpoint. I was raised on the teaching that homosexuality is inherently immoral and depraved. It was, according to the churchgoers in my town, “just not natural.” What felt totally unnatural to them felt all too natural to me.
Since childhood, I’ve had innocent crushes on girls. As I reached my adolescent years, shows like The Fosters and Modern Family showed me that these crushes could develop into committed relationships and fulfilling marriages.
The church preached that my homosexual feelings were fine as long as I didn’t act on them or seek to get married. They argued that it was the same principle as straight people being forbidden from sex out of wedlock. The difference was the straights had an out to their temptation: Marriage. Gays’ temptation hit a wall because we could not, within the church, get married.
So the solution for us was unequal. We had to resign to a lifetime of celibacy. And if we “stumbled” into sex — or worse, rejected the church’s teaching, got married, and built a life with the person we loved — we had to leave that person, repent, swearing up and down that our love was a mistake that we had learned would lead to destruction.
The heartache of leaving behind a love, a life, a home, would be “healed by Jesus,” they promised. The pain behind self-proclaimed “ex-gay” eyes said otherwise.
Waking up from those antiquated views, I now find them hypocritical at best. I don’t know if God despises my sexual activities. I’m trying to sift between the words that men put into God’s mouth and the words that God has actually said.
I believe in the Divine. Whether that divinity still takes the form of the Judeo-Christian God, I don’t know. I’m taking my time to figure that out. I’m not accepting the quick and easy answer of “yes” anymore without reasoning to back it up.
I’m trying to sift between the words that men put into God’s mouth and the words that God has actually said.
I don’t know where my spiritual beliefs land at this point. I do know that enthusiastically consensual sex with someone I love has allowed me to become more in tune with my body and embrace the intuitive sensuality that toxic individuals, in the past, had abused to their benefit. It’s allowed me to make peace with my scars, and it has relieved my stress.
I also know that, if I took a leaf from the traditional “no sex before marriage” book and combined it with the church’s “no homo” principles, I would have been in for a traumatic and rude awakening on my wedding night. The permanent physical damage wrought by years of abuse renders heterosexual, penetrative sex impossible for me. It would have most likely resulted in a sexless marriage or one of constant pain in trying to force God’s “natural” design for physical oneness between man and woman.
When I was an evangelical Christian, my gayness was A-okay as long as I remained celibate. I now reject the denial of my completely normal sexual orientation in exchange for perpetual guilt and feelings of inherent disorder as a human being. In the past few months, I’ve allowed myself to fall in love with the type of person anti-LGBTQ+ Christianity forbids: An AFAB nonbinary he/they lesbian. Also, we’ve had sex. Great sex. My repressed self would not have dared admit that. But I’m not that person anymore.
Among a million other things, my relationship has taught me that I’m definitely gay and I’m definitely not asexual. My experience of asexuality was the result of a fear of sex, fear of my homosexual identity (aka internalized homophobia), fear of pain due to a traumatic past, and fear of letting my Christian community down.
I no longer identify as asexual. I don’t lack sexual feelings or a sex drive. At the risk of oversharing, I have an abundance of both. Demisexual seems like a more accurate label, but I couldn’t have found that out until I met someone who I connect with on a profound emotional and sexual level.
Obviously, this is not to say that asexuals don’t exist — that letter in LGBTQIA+ has to fight for its right to be seen enough, and I certainly don’t want to contribute to that erasure. But, in my case, I mislabeled and misunderstood my discomfort surrounding sex as asexuality.
I have expressed that I’m a private person when it comes to sex. This was never for my benefit, but rather my reputation among judgmental Christian peers. I’m used to being seen as a rebel, even as an adult, for admitting that I have sex outside of heterosexual marriage.
Sex has connected me to my truth in a powerful way. My love sees my branding mark, many scars, and emotional wounds as they are — battle scars worthy of honoring. My body is not a plaything to them, nor a vessel for future offspring. Rather it is a gift I choose to give to someone who cherishes me.
No one else has ever seen me like that. To have someone share in my pain and witness my value and power has made me more confident to seek the help, and to demand the respect, that I need. This is about more than just sex or religion. It’s about the right to heal on my own terms. It’s about my hope that others who have found themselves through losing their religion do the same.