I so dislike the words "sexual identity" and "sexual minority." Though I think well-meaning people can use these words I also think that the far right and very conservative Christians use them to emphasize "sex" so they can feel better about being homophobic or, worse, feel okay with demonizing gay people.

Maybe homophobic do not see this or maybe they might not even be capable of grasping this, but being gay is not about sex. It really is not, at least not for people like me who are celibate and/or virgins. I would like to give anti-gay people the benefit of the doubt and believe that they would feel differently if they knew how much gays and lesbians suffering from being marginalized (or even hated or abused) because of who they are, but I am not so sure. 

What I am sure about it is that for those of who who are gay, especially lesbians (who I think tend to be ridiculed even within their own community for this), finding novels like the one below is very, very rare and much appreciated:

a rare and special thing, where a main character is a lesbian and a virgin and an adult

Never has a book hit so uncomfortably close to my truth...I want to keep reading and yet I do not...

The story of she who shall go nameless is real, but cannot be told. I must have started it fifty different times, but because I care so much I just can't get it right. I have the words, but I don't have the words, they are in my heart, but I can't dig them out. They most likely should stay there anyway...and I know, I know SO much, that they must be ignored or forgotten, but they refuse to be😔I love a woman who does not love me: big deal, not to anyone else, but to me it really is and all I can do is just keep it to myself, steer clear of her whenever I can and be the mature woman I know I am way deep down inside.

How I feel when I am with my cat  :)

I have made SO many mistakes in my life, some of them worse, but none of them more painful than my not being able to let go of my feelings for a woman in whose world I have no meaning at all, not even the smallest of ones. I pray every day and still they stay.

One top of this and yet not really related because it is a different kind of pain and something I can manage better, no matter how frustrating and hurtful it is is a vent that may seem like something little, but is something big to those of who continue to be misunderstood by friends and family and even,in general, society...

I am tired of words like 'sexual minority' and 'sexual preference/orientation'...so sick and disheartened. I am a lesbian, yes, but I am also a virgin and I do not truly know what sex is. I do not consider myself a very sexual person, I am certainly not sexy or sensual in any kind of way nor am I considered that way by anyone else.

Until our society, both liberal and conservative, stop thinking of gays and lesbians in almost exclusively sexual terms there will never truly be any freedom from homophobia. I cannot not be a lesbian, if that makes sense, but I can not be sexual. I never have been and considering no one has ever seen me that way and I know nothing about (personally as opposed to reading about it) sex I most likely never will be. 

When it comes to gay people and statements (often said, I would like to think, with well-meaning intentions) like "I don't care what two people do in their bedroom") we still have a long to go in seeing gay people first as people who love other people. Sex, for many of us who are gay or lesbian, is secondary or most likely even further down the list of who we are.