I know this has been a reeeeeally long thread, and the course it's taken doesn't surprise me at all. But I would like to give my two cents.
Growing up and entering puberty, I had Internet access and a curiosity about what people looked like naked. You can imagine what happened as a result. While I never actually have looked at porn per se, I treated lots of things like it was porn.
As a result of the budding sexuality, I became what is known as "bi-curious". I did not choose this, nor was I born with these desires. They came from my own mind that fooled me into thinking that the naked human form was inherently sexual and worth pleasuring myself to.
I loved with fear of being caught and shame for years. I thought that my life would be ruined if I was found out, and for me, there no love involved. I didn't enter into any homosexual relationships--i couldn't navigate socially, nor was I even sure if I wanted such a thing.
It made parts of my adolescence pretty painful. I didn't really know why I was doing what I was doing--men and women both turned me on, but in a sense it was not natural--it was forced. I forced myself into having a sexual response, and soon it became instinctive. I wanted the women I saw. I wanted to be the men I saw, and maybe I wanted them sexually as well because I wanted them to fulfill my own manliness for me. I was barely a man as it stood.
I knew what a bisexual was, and looking it up I was repulsed. I didn't want that sort of lifestyle. I didn't want to be an "LGBT" person. I hadn't chosen this. And yet, supposedly, I was "stuck" this way. And what I feared the most was not people finding out and ostracizing me, but to be found out and accepted as someone who I was not, and all pleas to the contrary would be dismissed as just me being "in denial". How could I oppose gay marriage in light of masturbating to men? I did not want to be exposed as a hypocrite.
at some point my parents did catch me, but only after I had confessed (they had found out about my brother's habits first). They simply said "don't do it again or you'll get arrested". (They misunderstood what I had been looking at, and I was too humiliated to elaborate.)
I continued, of course. And I still do because I'm a sinner and I'm not perfect. However...
I did learn a lot about my own sexuality, and of how other people's tends to work as well. I realized why I wanted women and men, and that just looking at things did not ruin me to a life as a "bisexual". Maybe, because of it, I'm not "100% straight", but I do know that I, like most humans, am oriented to be sexual, and it's up to me to glorify God with my sexuality instead of just doing what I see fit. My body is not my own, but God's. Who am I to taint it with something very clearly expressed as sin?
My same-sex attractions are not so prominent anymore, and for the most part outside of the times when I look for something dirty, I find myself desiring to have sex with women invariably over men. So maybe I'm not a "true bisexual", but I have had struggles with my sexuality. And I would love to help other people with these sorts of problems even if the modern world insists I'm dangerous to them. Unlike a lot of Christians, I've had guilt of my sexuality, pain from feeling like an "other", and very similar struggles as homosexuals probably have had.
but in Christ, I am free. I still sin, but I know now that it doesn't have to mean what I think it means. I don't have to hate myself or the people trying to normalize sexual sin. I personally think that the church started the gay rights movement--not on purpose, but by shunning gay people and and then not appropriately handling the concept of homosexuality, whether attractions or actual sex. So now we have let the secular society take over and dictate our sexual norms. And those relaxed sexual norms let me get placed in an environment full of porn that caused me to stumble the way it did. But I ought not to blame society for my own faults, like a lot of people do.
I completely understand why a person would want an intimate relationship with a person of the same sex. I understand why a person would crave love and acceptance, and even find such a person sexually attractive. I've been through all of that.
But the sexual activity is still sinful. God knows our hearts and mindsets, and he knows they are deceitful. I believe the reason God prohibited homosexual relationships, aside from reproduction and emphasizing the importance of both mothers and fathers in raising children, he wanted people's masculinity or feminity fulfilled in Himself, not in another person.
In the past, I loved masturbating to muscular naked men, as well as women. I didn't want to have sex with them, I don't think, but I did want to be fulfilled by them. I wanted their validation, their approval that I was a man like them. I wanted their love, their bodies, their respect and acknowledgement. I wanted to be a real man, not a skinny wimp like I was.
I had to realize that God made me male. And that there was nothing I needed to do to prove it to myself. Not masturbating to men to try and find masculine energy in them. Not to women to prove I was a real man who got aroused by sexy women, like I thought all men did and should. But because God made me that way.
I know that there is probably a whole lot more to it than that, but I know why I did what I did and how it affected me. And I know now that there are ways for me to embrace my sexuality and not feel like I'm sinning. Many times my OCD makes me afraid that the battle isn't won or that people on here will try and convince me that I'm a closeted homosexual. But I have no reason to live in fear. God has seen to it that I'd be set free from sin and self-hatred.
