Thank you for your post. I was struck by a couple of things. Your suggestion that “most of us bi married men lead quietly monogamous lives” rings true with me. I have been happily married for nearly six years, and love my wife deeply. Yet, I have recently had the painful experience of realising that I have become really very fond of a guy I work with, and whilst I have not said or done anything to let him know how I feel, I wonder how I reconcile my determination to be faithful to my wife with a need for male affection that will not go away. I guess this is a struggle that many bi guys have. I’d like to write more about this another time.

But I was also struck by your comments on religion. Yes, I know that there are many people out there who practise a shrill and uncharitable brand of religion, but I’m glad you recognise that it doesn’t have to be like that. I am a Christian, and I have in the past struggled to reconcile my faith and my bisexuality. There are many of us who find the shrill elements of Christianity difficult: I do not see how anyone touched by the love of God can fail to acknowledge the complexity and the paradox of love itself. I’m not keen on fluffy ideas about love: it can be and often is painful, but that pain can make sense in the light of the Christian understanding of a God who loved us enough to take on human suffering. I don’t want to write specifically about bisexuality and Christianity, but I am intreagued by the way in which different types of love relate to each other. If I’m feeling brave one day I might try to write something coherent about that.

I’m glad to have discovered this site – as a straight-leaning bisexual, I find this site chimes more with my experience than much of what I have read elsewhere from the bi community, which often seems heavily focussed on the queerness of bisexuality.

The next fight, after getting bisexuality recognised as plausible, is to get polyamory recognised as plausible. Instead of as bullshitese for infidelity.

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re: ben: I think we’re having so much trouble with teenage pregnancy because sex education is too straight:

1. We teach kids that sex is for reproduction.

2. Kids learn from siblings/porn/masturbation/whatever that sex is fun.

3. Kids try to have sex for fun, but end up doing the reproductive version of the dance instead.

Solution:

Step 1: teach kids the boring biology part. Over-explain the evolutionary function of orgasms is as mechanical a way as possible.

Step 2, several years previously: teach relationships and romance. Young kids grok this already: “Does daddy love mummy? Damn right he does.”

(Step 2a: And especially, don’t enforce heterosexuality.)

Step 3, back in the present: teach about STIs. Don’t teach “contraception”—teach “safe sex”.

(Step 3a: And get over your penis-in-vagina fetish. Let “sex” = whatever. There are other dances.)

The “safe sex” bit was mostly happening already, seven, eight or bloody-hell-was-it-*that*-many years ago when I was at school in Britain.

Step 2 is what’s lacking. Recent such proposals were woefully misconstrued by the Daily Mail brigade as “TEACHING 6-YEAR-OLDS TO HAVE—*gasp*—SEX!”.