As an important preface, I am not remotely trying to insult or invalidate anyone here who does view their bisexuality almost entirely (if not entirely) through the lens of sexual activity and attraction. If your own queerness centers around sex exclusively, you’re just as gay as anyone else. I am not trying to say you are wrong or bad or deranged or a sexual deviant. Also, I’m not saying I don’t love sex or find sex important. Obviously sex is a part of my sexual orientation.

With that set aside….

It gets so discouraging during pride month especially. So much of the discourse around our community from our opponents centers around sexual perversion and deviancy. Even well-meaning straight folks who do support gay rights will still immediately have sexual questions or assumptions about you when you come out to them. They’ll think that queerness is tied in with promiscuity or a love of polyamory or an inability to commit or what have you.

They center the experience of being queer around the sexual aspects almost entirely. Jerks will say ‘I don’t care what you do in the bedroom but keep that away from me’ when we advocate for something like adoption rights or housing protections. They bring up sex like that’s all what being gay means or consists of. They fail to see the mundaneness of our lives, loves, and relationships.

I’m in an outwardly queer relationship. People know we’re some type of gay when they see us, though they likely assume lesbian. From there, they think stupid shit. They think we want to destroy the American family or eradicate the concept of family itself or that we’re mainly concerned with our ability to own a strap on or whatever the fuck. They think we are strange and foreign. They think we aren’t a family.

I just wish so many of these people could see and understand we are normal. We are in love. We are boring. We own a dog and have pretty geraniums in our front garden. We have college football season tickets and also the season pass for our local broadway touring. We love coffee. We volunteer with the local libraries. We pay our taxes and work full-time. We come home and lay in bed and read. We share in each other’s successes and failures and hopes and fears. We are building a life together. We are a family.

Sure, we have sex too! And that part is important to our relationship. But it’s not any more of a dominating factor in our lives than it is for the average straight couple. It doesn’t mean us existing indoctrinates children. It doesn’t make us any less typical or boring as a couple. Our lives could not be more normal as a young couple in the US now. But I feel so fucking constrained and defined by the emphasis on sex within the perception of queerness.

I am sorry if this is dumb or sounds weird. I just want to be recognized as a normal person who fell in love with a normal person. I hate knowing that to so many people, our loving and happy committed romantic relationship is just a union of sexual deviancy.