On February 15, 1982, Jeffrey R. Holland, then President of Brigham Young University, gave an address to the student body entitled "The Inconvenient Messiah." The premise is that when Jesus was tempted after his fasting, the real temptation was to do something "the easy way, by abuse of power and without a willingness to wait for the right time and the right way." Christ virtually said, "Yes, but not this way." He related this to sexual misconduct, saying "It, like every good thing, is God's right to bestow, not Satan's. When faced with that inherent appetite, a disciple of Christ must be willing to say, "Yes, but not this way"...I ask you to be inconvenienced until you've earned the right and paid the divine price to know the body and the soul of the one you love."

Over the past week, I've been having an email conversation with a young man using one of our websites. He says that he struggles with same-gender attraction and his problem was that he may have messed things up between himself and one of his best friends. I don't pretend to be a counselor, but in this case he is not a Latter-day Saint, as many site users are, so I cannot tell him to go talk to his Bishop. After a few semi-lengthy conversations, we got down to what the real issue is. You see, there's something wrong with the fact that a 15 year old feels he has to make decisions regarding his sexual orientation right now. That warrants a post of its own, but this young man said, "I like getting close to people, I like having them know they can trust someone, and out there someone one really does care." We talked about him turning this need to be close to others into something sexual when the curiosity of puberty hit, and now, his desire to be close with a friend went awry because he tried to take the convenient way, as Pres. Holland would describe it. He attempts to bypass what a real friendship is based on and get right to closeness, thinking that anything physical is the fastest and easiest way to get close with someone. He might wonder, "If these are good desires then why do I have to suffer alone rather than take what's available to me right now?" You see, someone wanting closeness might find a cheap substitute, really a counterfeit, readily available in any community of homosexuals or curious friends. He might accept this without being willing or realizing that with some effort he can have a real relationship, real trust with friends and have it be based on principles of mutual concern rather than fast gratification. Those who partake in this lifestyle early are in essence cheating themselves of what they really want, the relationships that will really help them to feel the closeness that they are looking for. I'm concerned with the number of youth visiting our sites feeling like they have to make decisions now regarding these things because so many of them are entering addictive lifestyles while they are really just learning how to cope with the combined effects of curiosity and lack of close male role models. If they could understand that real and healthy relationships go beyond the physical availability of someone, they might be willing to wait and actually go through the development process. It's the desire to bypass what they really want for what they think might be their only option and their need to just be close to someone right now. The inconvenient relationship is the only way to effectively build one based on trust, any relationship, friend to friend, boyfriend to girlfriend, etc.