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I think it depends what you're trying to do. If you don't make it A Statement, which can come across as preachy and/or virtue-signalling, then why should it hurt? As long as the character is compelling then nothing else should be an issue. J. K. Rowling did it really well with Dumbledore - from book 5 on it was fairly obvious that he was gay, but nobody gave two hoots coz it wasn't signposted as a "here, look how progressive I am! I've written a gay character!" thing. Dumbledore was just Dumbledore, and as a small aside he happened to be into Bad Boyz. If, of course, you're proselytising then you'll get backlash because nobody wants to be told how to be a Good Human via their fiction. So just write a good story with a good character and try not to push your views down people's throats and nobody will care whether MC likes guys, gals or slimy tentacled creatures.
I didn't think about Dumbledore possibly being gay until book 7, when the whole relationship with Grindewald came out. Even then I wasn;t sure, because awkward, lonely adolescent kids who are unusual in their talent or interests can have hero worship complexes and very intense attachments to like-minded peers that aren't sexual or romantic. That DD was an older man who seemingly lived alone at the school made him feel more asexual than anything else to me. But that went for all the other Hogwarts teachers too. None of them (save Hagrid and possibly Filch with Madam Pince) appeared to have anything resembling a romantic interest, let alone family.
Some would argue that DD's orientation was too subtle and glossed over. Of course, he was always a fairly remote character, and the narrative camera didn't spend any time with him when he wasn't with Harry and never dipped inside his head. If there were any LGBTQ students at Hogwarts, that was also glossed over. No one (for instance) was mentioned to have attended the dance in book four with a partner of the same gender, nor did any of the romantic pairings that were mentioned in passing in the book feature two students of the same gender, nor were non-gender conforming students described. All the plot-significant romances mentioned in the books were M/F.
I don't think that writers need to make a big deal about orientation if it's not a big deal in the culture portrayed, but there are ways of showing that different orientations are a part of a world and normalized (or not) without turning it into a so-called "issue" story as well. If opposite-gender romances figure into a story and are shown, even peripherally, then surely same-gender ones can too.
When someone or something isn't fully regarded as normalized yet in our own world, presenting a fantasy world with no portrayal at all of that something or someone will be taken by most readers as an absence.
While there are many (white heterosexual men) who somehow blow a fuse every time someone they are expected to relate to isn't a white heterosexual man, I think it's safe to say that they don't often open a book.
Sadly, this doesn't appear to be true. The whole "puppy" brou-ha-ha with the Hugos suggests that there are still plenty of readers (and writers) who want the genre to be male (and white, straight etc) dominated. The question is whether or not you want to write for these readers or for readers who are interested in seeing more realistic (and empowering) diversity in the books they read.
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