The sexual blur.

With straights falling for gays, lesbians dating men, and gay men in love with women, is anybody anything anymore? Just how important is sexual identity?

When Anne Heche sat down next to her girlfriend, Ellen DeGeneres, on The Oprah Winfrey Show and said, "I was not gay before I met her," many in Oprah Winfrey's audience--and Winfrey herself--were a bit bewildered. "That confuses me," Winfrey said. One woman in the audience asked Heche to explain what she meant, because "we're led to believe that people who are gay tend to know from birth, and you kind of disputed that." The only thing Heche could say in response was, "I didn't all of a sudden feel, I'm gay--I just all of a sudden felt, Oh, I love."

That wasn't a good enough answer for Winfrey, who decided to do a second show on "how someone becomes gay." Five days later Winfrey pitted scientists, psychologists, and journalists against each other in a debate over the nature of same-sex desire. Despite the sometimes belligerent, occasionally loud discussion about genetics, cultural anxiety, and the differences between men's and women's sexuality, not much was concluded, and vastly more questions were raised than answered.

The problem wasn't the idea that homosexuality is a biological, innate trait. That seems to be a well-accepted concept nowadays. Instead, what many people had a lot of trouble understanding and accepting is the sort of sexuality that Anne Heche represented to Winfrey's audience: fluid sexuality. This is changing sexuality,the sexuality that doesn't fit in a box, the sexuality that might reject labels, the sexuality that causes all sorts of political problems in a gay movement in which some spokespeople have for years been insisting, "We're born this way, we can't change, and--damn it!--if we could, don't you think we would have?"

The fact is that many people do change--or to be exact, they don't stay the same. "Gay," "lesbian," "bisexual," and "straight" are just labels, but the way people behave is a different issue entirely. "Whether you are homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual is not really important," says psychologist Adria Schwartz, author of the forthcoming book Sexual Subjects: Lesbians, Gender, and Psychoanalysis. "It might be appropriate to the way an individual experiences their sexuality but not appropriate for the way human sexuality works."

No one really knows how it works, but people such as Alfred Kinsey, the famed sexologist of the 1940s and '50s, tried to categorize it. While crude and simplistic, the Kinsey Scale is somewhat helpful in looking at the spectrum of human sexual behavior. On the scale a 0 represents exclusive heterosexuality, and a 6 exclusive homosexuality. The people who exhibit bisexual behavior fall somewhere between those two poles, making them, for example, 2s or 4s.

There seems to be some agreement that among women such sexual variability is as common if not more common than strict homosexuality, but the numbers for men are in dispute. Some argue there are just as many men; others say that male bisexuality is extremely rare. Nevertheless, few disagree that human sexuality manifests itself in very different ways and that it can even change at various points in a person's life. Ron Fox, a psychotherapist and researcher m San Francisco, says, "Some people have the same orientation all their life with the same kind of sexual fantasies, and other people don't."

Once you have settled into an identity and built a life around it, anything that doesn't fit can be disconcerting and upsetting. This is true not only for heterosexuals who come to the realization at some point in their lives that they are attracted to people of the same sex but also for people who have long identified as homosexual and who develop or begin to notice attractions for the opposite sex. Schwartz says that many of her clients, most of whom are lesbians, report sexual dreams and fantasies about both men and women. "They come in worrying that they may really be straight," Schwartz says. "There's a false premise that if you are something, then that's all you are."

That's easier said than practiced. What you call yourself has all sorts of meanings, both political and cultural, and once you call yourself something--"lesbian," for example--you're expected to act a certain way. Few places is this a more contentious issue than in some (but not all) lesbian communities when a member of that group enters a relationship with a man.

Filmmaker Elaine Holliman likens it to being treated like Marilyn Munster, the Marilyn Monroe look-alike on the TV show The Munsters who looked nothing like her more beastly relatives. "They were so disappointed by her," Holliman says, laughing.

When Holliman was nominated for an Oscar in 1994 for her documentary about same-sex marriage, Chicks in White Satin, she had been openly lesbian for years but had just started dating a man. "I wasn't prepared for being in the limelight with someone hairy on my arm," she says. Holliman, who is working on the documentary series Gone Straight... to Hell! which concerns this issue, said she had to hide her relationship while riding the success of Chicks in White Satin. "There were all these rumors going around that I was straight," she says.

While Holliman seems to be amused by the reactions to her bisexual behavior, JoArm Loulan isn't. When Loulan, a longtime lesbian activist and the author of Lesbian Sex, became involved with a man and decided to talk about it, she subsequently received a great deal of criticism from other lesbians. (On Oprah she jokingly called her relationship "deviant behavior.") She rejects the term bisexual because she fell for this particular man, not men in general. But that's hard to get across. "I understand they're upset and don't want me to have the privileges of being a lesbian and having heterosexual privileges at the same time," Loulan says. "But I'm proud of myself for telling the truth."

Not everyone who has crossed these borders is so open, and they're not all women. Filmmaker Gregg Araki--who, like Loulan, has a commercial identity closely connected to homosexuality--is now romantically linked to Kathleen Robertson (of Beverly Hills, 90210 fame), who appears in his new film, Nowhere. Past films such as The Living End and Totally F***ed Up dealt with gay life and built Araki a strong gay audience.

Loulan, a therapist, says she has turned down speaking engagements and may have lost referrals because of her disclosure, but it remains to be seen how Araki's gay following will react. He doesn't talk about the relationship and through his producer turned down an interview with The Advocate. Says Holliman: "He turned Sundance [film festival] on its ear when he showed up with a girl on his arm."

The truth can be hard. Lesbians who have come out about being involved with a man have to deal with possible rejection from gays as well as questions about their cultural and political identity. "We all had that sinking-ship feeling when we came out [the first time]," Holliman says. Maria Maggenti, the director of The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, echoed that sentiment in an interview with The Advocate in 1995: "It's pretty strange that 12 years [after I came out as a lesbian] I would fall in love with a man, be totally traumatized by it, and have to come out again."

When a JoAnn Loulan or a Maria Maggenti comes out about her opposite-sex love, the uneasiness among some lesbians isn't surprising. The bisexual behavior of a friend or a role model throws into question your own sexuality and identity. "The discomfort is very understandable in our culture, which is dominated by dichotomous thinking and polarization," says Beth Firestein, a psychologist and editor of Bisexuality: The Psychology and Politics of an Invisible Minority. "People get nervous about it because we're taught it can't happen," says Loraine Hutchins, a bisexual activist and coeditor of the anthology Bi Any, Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out. "We're taught that we have to choose sides, that we can't not. choose sides."

Sociologist Paula Rust has found that up to 90% of women who identify themselves as lesbians have had sex with men and that nearly 65% say that they're at least somewhat attracted to men. "In terms of behavior and attraction then, many lesbians could be called bisexual," says Rust, who teaches at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. "Yet they call themselves lesbians.... [They do this] not only because of attraction and behavior but also for political reasons."

Because many of these women think bisexuality doesn't exist, Rust says, they don't see it as an option in describing their identities. Rust looks to the origins of the gay movement for explanations. In the early days of gay liberation and feminism, the goal was to break down the distinctions between the genders as well as between gay and straight. However, during the 1970s as the movement solidified, it also "ethnicized," Rust says. It took on the political methods of the civil rights movement, which had been successful by exposing the ways people of different races were treated. In other words, homosexuality was treated as an ethnicity. "In order to use ethnic politics, they had to pretend as if there was a clear boundary between gay and straight," she says. While it was probably a good strategy, it didn't leave room for anyone who was neither gay nor straight. "When someone comes along and says, `I'm bisexual,'" Rust says, "it makes the line between gay and straight ambiguous again and throws into question our ethnic form of political movement."

Deeply ingrained in this mode of political argument is the "Biology is destiny" mantra, the idea of having no choice. The political inclusion of bisexuals as well as transgendered people in the larger gay and lesbian movement complicates this explanation. It's not that bisexuality isn't also a result of some biological process but rather that it becomes difficult to say "We had no choice" when, to a certain extent, bisexuals do. Kate Bornstein, the performance artist and transgender activist, says that for many of the transgendered, transgressing the laws of gender is a moral and ethical decision, not a genetic predisposition.

Some feel that on its face the biology-and-genetics argument is useless, if not offensive. "I don't need to think I was born that way to accept my gay feelings. I'm just fine about those gay feelings," says Jonathan Ned Katz, author of The Invention of Heterosexuality. "A lot of people have adopted the idea that it's all right to be gay if you're born that way. If you say your experience is different, it upsets those people who have justified their feelings with that type of explanation, and it upsets straight people that the line between straight and gay isn't so clear. "

Amy Agigian, who teaches "queer theory" at Brandeis University, agrees. "I've never found the `I can't help it' argument very persuasive or very helpful in the politics of sexuality," she says. "As a feminist, for me it's about being able to follow your heart and being able to love who you love and desire who you desire." Agigian says there needs to be room for the people who don't necessarily have a fixed sexual orientation.

This is the central issue of one of the year's most provocative films, Chasing Amy. The Kevin Smith comedy is about a comic-book artist named Holden (played by Ben Affleck) who falls in love with another comic-book artist named Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams). Alyssa is a lesbian, and to Holden's surprise she falls in love with him. However, though Alyssa calls herself a lesbian and lets Holden think that it is just him--not men in general--she's attracted to, her past behavior turns out to have been actively bisexual, and the relationship falls apart. Holden can't handle Alyssa's "wild sexuality" nor the fact that she's had more experiences than he's had. While he likes thinking of himself as someone totally unique and special in her sexual life, once he realizes he is only part of something bigger, he falls apart. For Alyssa, on the other hand, it's about having the right to love whomever she falls in love with. Being able to choose empowers her.

"Why is everybody freaking out about it being a choice? It's a great choice," Loulan says. "I don't know why the genetics argument is going to help us. It didn't help blacks. I think it is a pathetic argument to say `I can't help it.' I don't think it exists for everybody, and I don't think it matters."

Katz, along with Loulan, was a guest on the "origins of homosexuality" Oprah show. After they finished taping the show, Katz says that the discussion continued for about 40 minutes, during which "Oprah said that she had a revelation that, `Oh, it's OK to be gay even if you're not born that way.'"

Clearly, these are confusing issues. Fluid and variable sexuality is something that cannot easily be pinned onto an identity, much like multiethnicity, which defies simple racial categories like black, white, or Asian. As identities become more ambiguous, identity politics will falter, Bornstein says, adding that "people pinned their hopes on identity and not on values, and now they are terrified as they feel their identities falling around their ankles." Identities are fragile and constructed, according to Bornstein. "There are no pure identities." she says. "In any system of identity politics, someone is going to be left out because their identity isn't `pure enough.' Value politics, on the other hand, takes some thinking. It means everyone who is involved with a value-based politic needs to make the decision of 'Yes, I agree with that value.' It's not a matter of `I'm a --, so I automatically should follow the politics, of that -- identity.'"

So what is Heche's identity? Is she lesbian? Bisexual? Straight? From what we know of her through the media (Heche turned down an interview with The Advocate), that isn't the issue. Certainly a case could be made that since Heche's father was gay, her same-sex attraction has a genetic basis. However, because her father lived in the closet and died of AMS complications, she says that she will live her life only truthfully and that it was these morals--or ethics or values--that led her to accept her love for DeGeneres and be so open about it. What's the problem then? As a movement are we concerned more about genes--or about truth?