Responding to the Romantic Interest of a Homosexual Person

Repeatedly in my dreams last night I was the object of romantic interest from gay men. It wasn’t interest that I desired but I realized as I woke that it kept coming back because I was trying to figure out the proper response to such attentions. These weren’t aggressive or predatory men, just men who find me attractive. I was trying to formulate the appropriate response to convey my unequivocal lack of interest while at the same time not crossing over into being hateful of those men. In our modern society this is something that our children may well deal with. Gay youth have been dealing with it for ages. The difference is that when a girl expresses interest in a gay boy he doesn’t run a lot of risk that he will make her feel abhorrent simply because he wasn’t interested in her attention.

As I have tried to make sense of what the proper response would be I have come to realize that part of the problem is that we are dealing with inherently abhorrent behavior when we deal with homosexual romantic interest.

I’m not going to claim some sort of eternal fairness in the issue but the best way to deal with it is for homosexuals to avoid expressing romantic interest in those of their same gender even though such interest may come naturally to them.

In those cases where they find someone who shares their orientation and affection they should at least have the social sense not to broadcast it to everyone around them. I’m sure that sounds heartless but I’m convinced that our societal acceptance of homosexuality as normal has caused some to identify with the LGBT community due to early  experimentation or pressure from peers who viewed them as having homosexual traits when they might otherwise have lived rather comfortably as heterosexuals in society. In other words, as Elder Packer warned decades ago, we have made the problem larger and more painful by talking openly about it than we would have if it had remained private.

I honestly feel great sorrow for anyone who is romantically attracted to people of their same gender.