THE NATURAL WAY
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The last few months of my life I've started to notice something really interesting. I have started to feel more comfortable in my body and gender expression. Before I came out I was so nervous to go out in public dressed in women's clothes. I did not have the mental space to understand my sexual orientation. Just a fair warning I'm going to get into some pretty personal things in this writing.
In the spring of 2022 I came out publicly as a trans woman and began wearing women's clothes, and living my life publicly as a woman. Over the last year of my life I have become more comfortable and it has felt more natural for me to put on women's clothes and live my everyday life. In fact I was talking with a friend the other day and we were saying if I had to put on men's clothes right now at this stage of my life it would feel really unnatural to me. In fact I would feel really awkward putting on men's clothes in general. I have allowed myself to naturally be myself. Gender expression is just that, it is expression but in this exploration I have discovered my sexuality. I started to understand in the last year of my life that the reason I was struggling so much in relationships with women my whole life was because it wasn't natural for me to have a sexual orientation towards only women. If you follow me for any length of time you'll start to notice that I am bisexual. As an ex Evangelical Christian pastor this totally freaks out all my old friends, but here's the crazy thing. It is most natural for me to be free to date and have romantic relationships with men or women. In fact it's a much more pure expression and more natural for me to allow myself to have a relationship with both genders.
With the vast audience that is reading this that it would be impossible to know what everyone's sexual orientation is. Imagine with me for a moment that whoever you are attracted to, whoever you love, I want you to imagine that I was here telling you that you are not allowed to love that person. That the other sex that you are not attracted to was the natural order of humanity. Now I want you to imagine that I told you if you didn't fall in love with and marry that kind of person you would burn in hell for eternity. This is what Christianity has done to non-heterosexual people. Religion has told us that we are sinners and we will burn in hell if we love the wrong sex.
Many will point to Romans 1 as the argument against same sex loving relationships. Now you factor in being transgender that creates a whole new equation. I joke with people, “if you are willing to do the math, I as a trans woman attracted to men is technically straight”. Let's just say that Christians had a problem with who I love. Romans 1 would say that my biology should be attracted to the opposite biology. I want to encourage everyone that on the surface level it may look like that if you're reading it once or listening to it from a pastor's mouth who's trying to prove a point. However, let's really look at the scripture for a moment.
ROMANS 1:24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
The people exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and started worshiping created things instead of God himself. FOR THAT REASON, God gave them to their SHAMEFUL desires, and they left NATURAL ways.
EXAMPLE: Some men in prison turn to violent practices for sexual gratification, however when they leave prison they revert to their “natural” womanizing and hetro-sexual behavior. It is meant to be abusive behavior.
But could it be possible that there is a “natural way” for those who have LGBTQ identity that is not abusive? Yes. People are not condemned in scripture for their natural ways, but for using unnatural means to abuse others. With this distinction we can assume there can be HEALTHY & UNHEALTHY LGBTQ Expressions of sexuality just as there are healthy and unhealthy heterosexual expressions.
It is important that we understand that “nature” is nuanced to each individual who walks the earth. What was natural for my grandparents is totally different from what's natural to my mother. Further, what is natural to my mom and me is different and that's just within our family. There are so many definitions of natural in one family let alone humanity. Now multiply that by every family and every individual on Earth what feels natural to one person is not a carbon copy to the other. This points to the creativity of God. Is God not more creative than binary sexual nature? Anybody who says that God makes a biological man to love a biological woman and that's the only way it should be has a really low value of God's creativity. Let's understand the fullness of God's creation let us understand that humanity is nuanced in every single person. and the nature of love is bigger than the binary.
