“I wish that people would take that step back and think about how it would make them feel.”
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Transcript for Moral Barriers Between Us
In some ways I do feel like it’s a little hard to be bisexual here on campus. I mean, I’ve heard this phrase time and time again: people who are bisexual just can’t make up their minds on who they wanna be with. I’ve heard that more times than I can count. I can’t tell you how angry it makes me each and every time I hear it. It sticks with me. It’s just so frustrating that people just can’t get through their minds this is just how I feel—I’m attracted to both men and women and it’s okay because that’s just how I am. It would be like, if the situation was completely flipped, and heterosexuality was not condoned and considered a sin, “Well you like people of the opposite sex. That’s so wrong.” I wish that people would take that step back and think about how it would make them feel.
I have had conversations with a friend of mine, and he himself is homosexual, so we sat down one night. It was a comfortable and a long needed conversation on how it feels to be bisexual and I struggled with him— trying to explain it to him as well. He didn’t judge me for it or anything, he just, he couldn’t quite get a grasp on how I could like both, and he, to an extent, could understand how I felt. But at the same time, it wasn’t how he felt, so it was very hard for him to grasp how I could feel that way.
It’s always very difficult whenever you start talking about how things make you feel and, if someone doesn’t feel the way you do, to empathize with them. When I came to school, I felt more comfortable with being who I was right from the get go, because I had that outlook on college that college is different and more open-minded than my high school would ever be, therefore, it’s okay to be myself here because other people are being themselves, too. For a moment, [I] forgot that I was coming to a conservative Lutheran institution, therefore there were a good majority of my friends who were conservative. I wasn’t comfortable coming out to them as bisexual because their religious belief meant a lot to them and I just didn’t want to create waves with us.
I feel very strongly [that] people shouldn’t judge people of different sexual orientation purely on religion. I think it’s mostly because I’m not very religious myself and I don’t understand why it’s wrong, but I support them in their beliefs, and that’s they believe in so I just didn’t wanna create tension. I probably wouldn’t be so uncomfortable coming out to them now, as I found a new friend group and people I was more comfortable expressing that part of myself with them. I’ve got more courage in just coming out and being like “Yeah, I’m bisexual and there’s nothing wrong with it.” I do believe we wouldn’t be as close friends as whenever [sic] we first started hanging out together. There would always be that moral barrier between us. They think what I’m doing is wrong, and I’m firm in the belief that what I’m doing is perfectly acceptable.