Bisexuality vs. Straight Faking

January 19, 2022

David Archuleta

David Archuleta's recent video has brought up a lot of feelings for a lot of people. It has also inspired a lot of people to open up about their own experiences. It's been amazing and beautiful to watch. His honesty was stunning and sweet. What an example of forthrightness he has set for us all. For me, watching it was beautiful and joyful, but also a bit painful.

The painful part for me was his story about attempting to be straight. Like so many other young religious gays and lesbians, David attempted to date and please the opposite sex only to experience a sense of failure and disappointment. As David experienced, religions sometimes do convey the idea that a sincere gay or lesbian believer should be able to fully follow God's plan, including making a family within a straight marriage. This can be beguiling and confusing for a non-heterosexual religious person.

I have to acknowledge again my past role in perpetuating that confusion. I was an example of a BISEXUAL person who made a straight marriage work. I, and others like me, were able to do what David hoped he could do—to be attracted to the same sex but have an intimate relationship with the opposite sex.

That is confusing because, if you are gay and religious it is easy to convince yourself that you can find that opposite-sex attraction within yourself if you just try hard enough. "After all," you may think, "look at all these people who have done it!" But it doesn't work that way. No one can WILL themselves to be bisexual or straight. As a conversion therapist, I worked with so many people who, I now understand, were attempting to do just that. They were "straight faking" and I was their accomplice. Straight faking is not bisexuality, it's delusion. It's painful and it's cruel to everyone involved.

Ultimately for me, the strength of my heterosexual side couldn't hold. I eventually became overwhelmed with the need to be with a man. Rather than fake it, I left it. It was painful for both me and my wife and it was cruel to her.

Please read this next part carefully and pass it along to anyone you think might need to hear it: Any person who suggests to you, through their words or actions, that there is anything wrong with your natural sexual orientation is trying to entrap you in their own bigotry. Whether by nature, or by your upbringing, or by God's will, you were made to be as you are and it is perfect for you. I express, once again, my sorrow for ever having believed and taught otherwise.

Thank you David Archuleta for recognizing that trap, for resisting it, and for bringing greater light to it.