Heterosexual AND Queer

A few days ago I received the message below:

I appreciate your generosity in offering them [Kindle versions of Where True Love Is] for free on Valentine's Day and made a point to download the book.

I sat down at lunch to start reading it and your introduction gave me pause.

Specifically, the discussion that you and your wife both identify as heterosexual, but are married to each other and also participate in and consider yourselves part of the LGBTQIAA+ community.

You are very obviously in love with your wife, and for this reason I question the self description of heterosexual.

By definition, if you identify as heterosexual, you aren't a part of the Queer Community.

Can you help me understand where you are coming from?

Here's how I can best answer it. I think most people have a "factory mode" sexual orientation. Some are straight, some are attracted to the opposite sex, some are attracted to both sexes sexually, some to none, etc. My wife and I have always been attracted to men, and had relationships with men. This wasn't out of avoidance of our baseline orientation, it WAS/IS our baseline.

However, our love for one another encompasses every aspect of our life. We manifest our marital union emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and physically. We are attracted to each other sexually.

In being sexually drawn to each other we are not now also drawn to other females. Being together didn't flip our fundamental/built-in orientation. But love overcame that baseline, and transcended it.

Given this confusing reality, we have concluded that we are in fact part of the LGBTQIAA+ community, falling squarely into the Q. We are queer. We don't fit any of the traditional baskets.

Sexual and gender identity is so very much a spectrum, as the increasing number of letters in the LGBTQ+++ acronym conveys. Eventually (hopefully) the acronym will go away entirely, and we'll all just be people living our lives the way God created us to be.

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal. 3:28 NIV)