By definition, homosexuals are people who are sexually attracted to people of their own gender — men lust after men, women lust after women. Bisexuals, in contrast, are people who are attracted to BOTH genders. The very definitions of the words supply the answer to this "debate" question.
But wait, you say — some bisexuals are actually homosexuals who are in denial. Society is deeply prejudiced against homosexuals, after all. Political correctness might keep you from voicing your biases against women, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Wiccans, nudists, Arabs, or members of the ACLU, but by gorry, you can always talk nasty about gay marriage, and how the desire for a loving commitment between two human beings who happen to be the same gender undermines the God-blessed sanctity of Britney Spear's 55-hour marriage to Jason Allen Alexander.
The truth is that bisexuality doesn't seem to be "graven in stone" the way heterosexuality and homosexuality are. Some bisexuals are about 75 percent attracted to the opposite gender; some about 75 percent to their own gender; some of them even change over the course of years. In the mid-1940s, Alfred Kinsey devised a 7-point scale, with 0 being 100 percent heterosexual, 6 being 100 percent homosexual, and 1 through 5 covering the permeations of bisexuality. Kinsey's scale has been criticized over the decades (you have to stretch it to cover bi-permissives, for example — people who are open to the idea of experimental sexuality, but who don't bring the idea up themselves). Nevertheless, it remains useful and widely used.
In 1995, Harvard professor Marjorie Garber published "Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism in Everyday Life," a 600-page academic tome in which she argued that most of us would be bisexual if it weren't for "repression, religion, repugnance, [and] denial."
According to psychiatrist Joseph Merlino, senior editor of "Freud at 150," Sigmund Freud believed that all of us go through a bisexual phase before settling down, usually to heterosexuality. Homosexuals, Freud believed, are "people who [are] totally normal in every other regard except in terms of their sexual preference. In fact, he saw many [homosexuals] as having higher intellects, higher aesthetic sensibilities, higher morals; those kinds of things."
Problems may arise not from bisexuals themselves, but from deeply conservative people who believe that sexuality is a sharply defined aspect of character that can never change or evolve, and that any form of sexuality other than heterosexual marriage is sinful. These people usually identify themselves as Christians, but instead of practicing the Christian principles of love, compassion, acceptance, and forgiveness, they indulge themselves with hate, vitriol, exclusion, and worse.
If you're a heterosexual and the thought of "frolicking" with someone of your own gender fills you with repugnance, it may be that that repugnance spills over into your thinking about people who feel attraction rather than repugnance. Would it make you feel better to think about them as anthroposexual, pansexual, omnisexual, or pomosexual (POstMOdern)? How about ambisexuals, people who on Kinsey's scale would range from 2.5 to 3.5?
Whether you think that non-heterosexuals are sinful or disgusting, bear in mind that Sigmund Freud thought that homosexuals are smarter than you are and have better taste and better morals. BETTER morals! Sigmund Freud!
If you think non-heterosexuals are disgusting, remember that no one is asking YOU to join in their fun — and they probably wouldn't be attracted to you in the first place.
If you think they're sinful, remember that the Bible commands you in BOTH testaments to love them as much as you love yourself. Loving someone does NOT involve denying that person rights you enjoy yourself, or could if you wanted to. Loving someone does NOT mean vitriolic tirades against them (ESPECIALLY from the pulpit!), demonstrations, angry letters to the editor, bashing, beating, or murder. If Jesus were preaching his message in today's Los Angeles, he'd be hanging out not just with sex-trade workers and IRS agents, but with street gangs, used-SUV salesmen, illegal immigrants, and all other "dregs" oppressed by society — INCLUDING homosexuals and bisexuals.
There's a wonderful story about a man who went to his rabbi to complain that his son wasn't a good Jew, he didn't keep kosher, he broke commandments right, left, and sideways, he was dating a gentile, he no longer kept the Sabbath, oh, the horror, what should the man do? The rabbi replied, "Love your son more than ever."
You can't FORCE people who are different from you to become like you. You might, for a time, force those who are different to ride in the back of the bus or keep their true feelings "in the closet," but you will never change a left-handed person into a right-handed person — and it's judgmental, cruel, and narrow-minded to try.
You can't spread democracy through war any more than you can spread virginity through rape. And you can't spread truth or righteousness by being hateful. If you think people whose sexuality differs from yours are disgusting, sinful, or both, don't reject them, don't deny or limit their human rights, and don't rant. Remember that they are "totally normal in every other regard except in terms of their sexual preference."
Especially if you follow Jesus, your job is to "love them more than ever" — and let God deal with everything else.