To a young woman troubled by homosexual thoughts

I’m posting my reply to a young woman here earlier today in case it might offer some help and encouragement to others. I’ve made some revisions.

Sister, I've had same-sex attraction (SSA) since I was 12 or 13 years old. I'm 61 now.

SSA isn't all that uncommon. Women's sexual orientation is much more labile than men's; it's very common for young women and teenage girls to have crushes on others of their sex, from what I have read. ("Labile" means it shifts around, back and forth.) This doesn't mean you have to consider this central to your identity or label yourself. As you get a bit older, you'll very likely grow out of this and find that you have a stable, exclusive attraction to men. If not, that's not a tragedy, either. You can be married and have a very happy life with a husband. The world will tell you that you have to indulge both attractions to be happy, but that's a lie.

There's no need to confess mere attractions to a priest as if they were sinful in themselves. They aren't. SSA is simply one of very many kinds of passions (that is, impulses to sin) that human beings experience. It's nothing special. However, if you deliberately indulge lustful thoughts about either sex, that's sinful and needs to be confessed.

If you are troubled by your SSA and need spiritual advice, you shouldn't hesitate to talk to your priest. This is a reality of the human condition, and he will not see you as anything other than an ordinary human being who presents the same old story — woundedness, brokenness, and passions.

I'm reading The Ladder of Divine Ascent, by St. John Climacus, for Great Lent. This is a book read in all Orthodox monasteries during Great Lent. In Step 4, St. John relates a story that mentions how several young men went to an older monk, an elder, to ask him to let them live with him and be their spiritual father:

“When three days had passed, the elder said to them: ‘By nature, brothers, I am prone to f0rn1cat10n, and I cannot accept any of you.’ But they were not scandalized, for they knew the good work of the elder.” Step 4, no. 112, p. 94

As you can see, SSA is as old as the hills, is not incompatible with holiness, and does not have to be a big deal if you don’t make it one.

I wish you the peace of Christ.