It bugs me that many people still equate same-sex attraction with “bedrooms”.
I don’t feel lust towards women. At all. What I’ve felt anytime I’ve fallen in love with a woman, was intense emotional affection, admiring her like she’s a work of art, wanting to talk about silly things that made her or me happy, be there for her if she’s in trouble, take care of her if she’s sick, be the most important people for each other, grow old together…
Yet there are plenty of heterosexual people, whose attraction is exclusively carnal and explicitly illicit. I knew a married woman, who had a lover, who paid her for their encounters. I also knew a priest, who brazenly flirted with or even propositioned women at every parish he was assigned to.
Nevertheless, when heterosexual attraction is spoken about, the emphasis is on love, when homosexual attraction is spoken about, the emphasis is on lust. Even people who admit that heterosexual attraction is not always innocuous, categorize homosexual attraction as lust-only. God, I’ve had people on this forum tell me that they know better whether I lust or not!
I don’t expect the Church to legitimize my hypothetical partnership with a woman, whereof I accepted the impossibility. But I do expect more consideration. My love, while forbidden, is not “a sin of flesh”.