Celena duncan i want your love back

Take Back The Word a queer reading of the Bible Robert E. Goss and Mona West, editors THE PILGRIM PRESS Cleveland, Ohio The Book of Ruth 8 The Book of Ruth On Boundaries, Love, and Truth CELENA M. DUNCAN Bisexual women resist the pressure to suppress their bisexual identities in a variety of ways. They frequently refuse to allow themselves to be located in the cultural code of binary categories of heterosexuality and lesbian. As prophets of the "both/ and," bisexual women transgress the boundaries of constructed sexual desire to create new alternative forms of relationship and family. Celena Duncan reads the story of Ruth as a bisexual midrash, making room for inclusive possibilities of alternative desires . ~ In commenting on her view of the book of Ruth, Alicia Ostriker quotes the ancient rabbis speaking of Torah, "Turn it and turn it for everything is in it." 1 Everything under the sun is in scripture, sometimes more obvious, sometimes less, but there nonetheless. That is its beauty, its richness, what accounts for its longevity. Regardless of the trappings of the societynomadic, pastoral, or technological-scripture speaks to our hearts today, just as it did to our spiritual ancestors. The rabbis became masterful at peering intently into the depths of the clear pool of scripture, then commenting on their observations, based out of their study, their life experience, and their own interactions with God. In the spirit of rabbinic tradition, I read the book of Ruth as a bisexual midrash. 2 First, I want to make some comments on bisexuality. While writings on the subject are increasing, there is currently still far less written and understood about bisexuality than homosexuality or heterosexuality, and there is certainly no agreement even on what late-twentieth-century bisexuality is, much less what it was in ancient times. The larger society thinks it needs, and so requires, the use of neatly printed labels by which to organize everyone into tidy categories. In identifying as bisexual, I have had the experience of erasure from both sides of the aisle. Many (not all) heterosexuals, uncomfortable with sexuality in general, have enough trouble trying to deal 92 93 with issues of homosexuality; for them, a discussion of bisexuality is beyond possibility. As much as homosexuality is feared and rejected, it is at least seen as the opposite and so can be understood in terms of being one way or the other, straight or gay, but not both! And many (not all) gays and lesbians are suspicious of bisexuals, uncritically assuming the negative message they have heard flung at themselves, instead of breaking the pattern of alienation and fear of what is different, and passing that negative message along to another group, saying, without information and knowledge, "You can't be who and what you are." Why are we so unwilling to accept the reality of forms of sexual orientation other than our own? Why are we so unwilling to believe that all sexuality is as varied and diverse as the rest of God's creation? Boundaries, pigeonholes, and labels are human constructs, and God, if we will take Jesus, Paul, and the writer of the book of Ruth at their word, loves to see all of them broken down and swept away. Biodiversity and sexual diversity are God's created norms. I do not understand bisexuality only in terms of sexual attraction because this understanding limits human capabilities and reduces people to sexual objects, no better than the sum of their sexual organs. Beautiful and sacred though it is, the physical act of sex does not need to be the bottom line in every discussion of sexuality.