I've just begun looking at how to get my currently 4 year old son into boy scouts and had a long discussion with my ex-husband about his homophobia and the scout troops. This brought up quite a train of thought for me. Despite the fact that this man married me and lived with me for three years and fathered my two children, he seems to constantly overlook the fact that I'm bisexual and polyamorous. I'm not even mentioning the fact that I'm kinky on top of all that. It's not like I ever hid any of that from him and at one time he led me to believe that he found this aspect of my being something desirable. It’s this extreme contrast between persons inexplicably terrified of opening their minds and hearts and those that have, even if slowly and privately, embraced all the possibilities that being truly yourself can offer that is causing such conflict.
Being bisexual and living in the southern United States is a scary thing, especially when you have children. Being polyamorous and living in the southern United States on top of that can be downright terrifying.
In my experience, being forced to accept that you will never be accepted by your family, by many of your friends, and also by your surrounding community really screws with one’s perception of themselves. If I was totally open about my relationship preferences, some of the consequences I would face might include losing my children, or at the very least a custody battle. My ex-husband, being the homophobic paranoid man that he his, has threatened repeatedly to attempt to take custody of our children because my preferences are not “right” and that my influence on the kids might cause them to be gay or bi or “deviant” should I act on the desires that my preferences engender. Losing my job. I work for a Baptist church that I’ve attended since I was 7 or 8 years old… I think this one is fairly self explanatory, but it also falls into being rejected by my community. My parents and the rest of my family would also likely reject me, despite the fact that I have two cousins who are openly gay. Being bisexual and polyamorous is a whole different matter. That’s just being “shameful and greedy.” (a direct quote from one of those cousins).
The strides being made to open groups like the boy scouts to gay members and, hopefully... eventually, gay leaders give me hope that maybe, one day, at least my children won’t have to feel so oppressed. Maybe my struggles with accepting myself, despite the lack of acceptance from others in my life, will help them to see that a person is a person is a person, no matter the color of their skin, their age, their sex, their gender, their sexual preference or how many people they can honestly tell “I love you.”
