Making Strides: LGBT Pride Month

          I don't have much to say in this post, except that I just learned that yesterday President Obama and The White House announced that June is officially LGBT Pride Month. Hopefully it will lead to more social openness and understanding in our society and more people can be proud of who they are. So, in the words of our President:

"Every generation of Americans has brought our Nation closer to fulfilling its promise of equality. While progress has taken time, our achievements in advancing the rights of LGBT Americans remind us that history is on our side, and that the American people will never stop striving toward liberty and justice for all.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2011 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people."

          Click here to read the entire release from the White House Press Secretary. Feel free to share your thoughts on it in the comments below....

Being Reminded How Much Hate is Still Out There

          I just read this article about a young transgendered woman who was beaten into a seizure at a McDonald's in Baltimore, Maryland. The video below (which is also in the linked article above) is quite violent. The teenagers keep coming back, after walking away, and beating her more. Toward the end they are dragging her across the restaurant and, while kicking and hitting her, and almost get her out the door when she goes into a seizure.

        

















          The only one who did anything at all was the manager who just stood to the side and kept yelling "stop". The other employees just stood there to the side, and you can hear many of them laughing through half of the video. (The video itself was being shot by one of the employees).
          You know, I've been becoming more open about who I am as a bisexual man. I've been slowly coming out to family and friends. I'm not out to many people just yet, only maybe five or six people. I've had mostly positive experiences with everyone that I've come out to so far though, and the more open I am, the better I feel about myself. The world around me doesn't seem to be as hateful against be being bi as I originally felt it would be. Though, things like this constantly remind me how much hate there still is out there for people who are different from what mainstream society wants to accept. Things like this are a constant reminder to me of how important it is for not only me, but all LGBT people to be open about who we are, to constantly change the public perception, to get it into mainstream that none of us are that different. I want to live in a country where no one puts up with this kind of hate and violence because they don't see non-heterosexual, non-gender norm people, as any different than someone who likes a different flavor of ice cream than they do. I have no idea what the injury status of the girl who got beat up in this video is, but I can only hope that she will recover okay.
        

Being Outed to Old Friends, Still a Difficult Experience

I still am not posting very often. I attribute this to my slow progression toward opening up my bi side. I am comfortable with being open to myself, and I am enjoying myself as the situations arise. However, I've still been self conscious about coming out and being open to some of my oldest friends. I say that mostly because they were all raised the same way as me, and we were all raised to be quite homophobic growing up. Maybe I shouldn't care at all, but for some reason the idea of all my old friends talking about how I "turned gay", as they would see it (plus, I'm sure that most of them don't see the distinction between gay and bi) does not feel good. Like I said, I know that I shouldn't care, but I have enough to deal with right now without hearing all my old friends saying who-knows-what about me.

Anyway, I knew this type of thing would eventually happen. After all, I changed my facebook profile from being interested in women, to interested in men & women last year. You know, I think that I stared at the "save profile settings" button for a while after I did that, before I went through with it and clicked it. I knew at that moment that I would have to be open about who I was, because eventually people would notice that little word "men" on my profile and start to talk, and possibly ask questions. Also, I'm sure that I made that change in the first place to force myself to be open about who I was. I've been ready to be open and out after all, but I knew that breaking through that wall would still be hard.

Well, that first experience of the wall to break through (I've been open to some of my newest friends, but only a couple, and it's my old friends and family from the past that I am talking about when I talk about breaking through that wall of being comfortable with being open) happened today. I got a call from one of my oldest friends, my best friend growing up, that I haven't talked to much in years. He'd been out of the country working for a bit and was back in our old hometown, making calls to catch up with our old group of friends. We chatted about what I've been doing with my life, my current point in college, and what he'd been doing with his life, etc., ya know, shootin the shit. Anyway, after talking for 20 minutes or so, out of the blue he just says "dude, are you gay?". I felt quite blindsided and thrown off to say the least. Needless to say, I just laughed a bit and said "ha ha ha, why would you think I'm gay?". In that half a second, my nervousness shot through the fucking ceiling, I new the cat was out of the bag, and I thought about all the things that might have been said about me for him to ask a thing like that. He then informed me that someone had said that I was gay or bi, then he mentioned being told that someone saw on my facebook that it said that I like men and women. I didn't shy away from the question, whether I wanted to or not. I said "yes, I'm bi". We went round and round for a bit where he said things like, "so you're gay?", and I said "no, I'm bisexual, there's a difference, I do like girls, I just like some guys too". He did say that he was suprised, because we were close friends for so long, and he never thought that I was gay, etc, which brought the whole conversation round in circles again as you could imagine.

Overall, eventually the conversation led back to my friend saying that it's cool, and he shouldn't judge me or anyone else for what they do. Also him saying that it's all cool and he should come down to my town and hang out some time. I was happy to be off the bisexual subject, happy to have the talk over with, and happy that, overall it went better than I expected. I was nervous and freaked out to have to break through that wall with an old friend, and I don't doubt that more of my old group of friends will be aware of everything now. I'm glad to get it out there for the most part, and I know that being open about that side of who I am will get easier after this encounter.

It's weird though. Even though things went alright, I still have this freaked out feeling, and the same nervousness has lingered throughout the rest of the day. It seems silly that I let it bother me so much, and maybe it is. But that's how I feel, and I just figured that writing about it would help. And, to anyone that reads this, thanks for listening...

I'm happy to be in America

It could certainly be worse. Parts of this 4 part series on youtube put tears in my eyes...

It's Been a While, I wish I'd Been Less Confused by Now

          I've been reading a lot of bi sites. websites that have lots of info with great people that are more than willing to help, share, talk when a person has trouble, whatever. Those sites have been wonderful.
          The one thing I cannot seem to shake is the one thing that I see questions asked about on most bi websites, and that is the question of fluidity. Of course I first thought that I might be the only one, but I have learned after much reading that this type of coming and going is quite common. I see many bi guys that can label themselves quite easily when it comes to their attraction between men/women to be something like 20/80, 30/70, 40/60, 50/50, 60/40, 70/40, 80/20, and more in either direction and in between. Of course I can label myself one of these fractions, one of these fucking numbers, but the damn things change every damn day. It seems like I fluctuate between 40/80 to 80/40 every 5 to 10 weeks. I feel like a bag blowing in the wind right now, wishing I could settle somewhere. Though, as soon as I settle for a second, another gust comes by and picks me up and shuffles me along. It's certainly frustrating. I guess this is life though. It scares me though. A relationship seems like such a task to undertake when I feel like that bag, flowing around in the wind.
          I guess I need to just get used to it, the calm wind will probably never come. However, if that is the case, where do I go from here?........

Hi, I'm Secular Bi Guy

          Welcome to my new blog. Since this is my first post, I figure that I should say something about myself and my reasons for starting this blog. For the time being you can call me Secular Bi Guy. I'm still closeted to most of the people I know, and that is why I've started this blog, as a way to talk about my bisexuality as well as issues that are of interest to the bi-community in general.
          I'm a couple years under 30 years old. I live in Texas, in an especially conservative area of an already very conservative area of the country. That taken in to account, along with the facts that I am a liberal, atheist, bisexual guy, and one can probably see why I have had a bit of difficulty finding a way to discuss my sexuality.
          I was raised strongly religious and conservative. Being raised that way probably has quite a bit to do with why it took me so long to face my own sexuality. I was raised to believe that homosexuality was an abomination, a horrible sin, and a huge cause of disease and pain in the world. Being raised with those types of ideas I was quite homophobic as a young man growing up, being of the opinion that homosexuality was akin to a disease or a mental disorder. The only difference being that this type of mental disorder made you a bad person. Being raised to think in this way, any feelings that may have emerged from time to time as I was growing up were not only ignored, but denied and suppressed to such an extent that I convinced myself that they did not exist at all. In my opinion, my suppressing of these feelings in such a way was really a type of defense mechanism. I say that because if I had forced myself to face my homosexual desires at that time, it would probably have pushed me into quite a bit of depression and I might have ended up as another statistic, just another teenager who committed suicide because he couldn't handle being something that everyone around him hated. So, for that reason I guess that I should be glad that I had the ability to suppress it to such an extent. At the same time though, I find it very sad that I had to suffocate part of myself for so many years. This suffocation and denial certainly did lead to a lot of confusion, as well as depression in it's own right, especially in more recent years.
          There is immensely more that can be said about all of this, which I'm sure I will go into in future posts. One thing that I would like to say now is that until this year, until I faced and accepted my sexuality, before I came out to myself and a couple other human beings, I was suffocating a part of myself. And now that I have accepted myself for who I am, a bisexual man, I have felt as if a part of my lungs that has been cut off my entire life, never receiving oxygen before now, is finally open and getting the oxygen that it needs for the first time in my life. I mean, I know it is metaphorical, but it literally feels like I am breathing deeper and with a fullness that I have never felt before now. I may still be confused about some things, and there is still plenty of self discovery to go before I will have a more complete understanding of my sexuality and be comfortable enough to be more open about it with those around me. However, this feeling of breathing deeper and embracing all of who I am as an individual has certainly been refreshing. Sometimes a bit scary, but I am constantly discovering that all those fears were unfounded and that being honest with myself is the best thing I could have ever done.
          Sooooooooooo...I hope that some will find this blog interesting enough to follow. A also hope that some will be compelled to share their thoughts and feelings about the topics I will discuss here. If you have any questions that you would like me to address, feel free to leave them in the comments, or even to email them to me and I may make a new blog post to answer them.........