The revelation which came to Mary Baker Eddy included the vision that gender, or sexuality, is a human concept, a limited perception of individual identity.
Gender… is a quality, not of God, but a characteristic of mortal mind (Science and Health 305). Masculine, feminine, and neuter genders are human concepts (S&H 516). Look long enough, and you see male and female one — sex or gender eliminated (Miscellany 268).
To believe one’s real being to be one or the other sex is like believing one’s real being to be young or old, or Murphy Brown is the real Candice Bergen. Our sexual nature is a role we play illustrating our eternal being of goodness and love. It is one illustration out of infinite possible illustrations throughout our eternal being. My sexual nature is not what it was when I was learning to walk, and twenty years from now I expect it will be different still.
When we see our sexual nature as just a limited definition of ourselves, it becomes totally irrelevant, spiritually speaking, if that definition is gay or straight. There are all degrees of masculinity and femininity within both sexes. And if we could look at populations totally free of cultural conditioning, we would surely find most men naturally attracted to men as well as women, and most women naturally loving women as well as men.
It is only in the past one hundred years that society has styled a group of people “homosexual” — that is, characterized by a basically homosexual nature. Before that, homosexuality was deemed a behavior anyone might practice. Society in Athens organized itself so that it was natural for attractive youths to be loved by young men and taught the virtues of good citizenship and behavior; and then, upon attaining mature manhood, taking a wife and providing the city with more sons. In Rome, above all else men had to be dominant. A Roman male dominated his wife, his children, his slaves, his enemies, all non-Romans. And it did not lessen his manliness if he took his pleasure on another man, as long as that man was not a citizen or the slave of another citizen.
In Victorian times women were expected to provide sex for their husbands, but not to enjoy it. Today society promotes, indeed, almost worships, couples. But it does not welcome couples of the same gender. Perhaps this is why today people whose homosexual side blossoms tend to mimic heterosexual marriages. It is what our society rewards, while Athenian society rewarded pederasty and Roman society rewarded male dominance over any sex.
Society may shape to some extent the way we illustrate our divinity — our Father-Motherliness — at any given stage, but it does not determine in any way what our divine nature is.
My quest for self-discovery has been aided and supported by many wonderful Christian Scientists. In addition to revealing the human transitoriness of sexual identification, Christian Science unveils the secret of true identity — our forever glorious being.
More than once Mrs. Eddy defines man — meaning man and woman — as the full representation of the divine, infinite, loving Mind (S&H 591:6,19). A FULL presentation of infinite Mind must include all lovely masculine qualities and all wonderful feminine qualities. That is what I ultimately present forever; that is what defines me. It is what you truly are. Nothing beautiful or lovely is left out of you, whether it is labeled humanly as masculine or feminine. In the words of the apostle Paul (Gal. 3:28):
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
