The Challenges of Dialogue

Here is the question I have been pondering for a long time: how does one get people to dialogue? The urgency of certain issues is clearly not recognized in the same way across the spectrum of our fellow sojourners in the Church. Similarly, the need for discourse is perceived as a dangerous challenge in many circles, a risk most in vulnerable positions, primarily ordained clergy and academics, are unwilling to undertake.

I must clarify immediately that I am not by any means advocating some form of “conscripted discourse”. Everyone moves at their own pace, and “I don’t feel the need to talk about it” should be respected. My concern lies with those interlocutors who enter the conversation of their own volition, but who are unwilling either to entertain any disagreement, or continue at all.

The defining premise of entering any dialogue is the willingness to accept that one may be wrong. This, of course, is always the ultimate challenge. For it is much more commonplace to enter into a conversation on a challenging topic with the objective to convert one’s opponents rather than let them state their case. Listening is a rare gift; by and large, it is the sound of our own voice that we are really enamored with in a discourse.

How can we engage those people who truly, strongly believe that the conversation is a non-starter, and that those who persist in discussing the matters of homosexuality in any form other than condemning the sin are at the very best deluded and at the very worst, agents of the Enemy?

A few random comments that are fairly typical:

The Church teaches that homosexuality and same sex marriage are sins – period. I challenge anyone to tell me otherwise.

Homophiles [sic.] (whom you clearly support) are engaged in painstaking perversion of scientific and biblical evidence to suit their agenda – a clearly demonic endeavor.

If the view of any contemporary “authority”, no matter how learned or holy, are in contradiction to the Church Tradition and the teachings of the Fathers, then they have no merit and do not deserve any consideration.

All this “urgency” of “gay issues” is the product of permissiveness of Western culture and is inherently alien to the Orthodox Church for which there is no “issue” and no “urgency.”

I am willing to accept that someone is born gay, and as long as they don’t live the lifestyle, it is of no concern to me. But I will not condone the lifestyle.

All of the above quotes belong to thinking, learned, earnest and caring people. Nevertheless, they formulate a fairly conventional viewpoint, one that refuses to entertain any possibility of disagreement since the issue is “set in stone” and the lid on it is closed shut.

So I pose the question to the members of this group: what drives the discourse? How does one get through the stone wall? Does anyone have any wisdom to share?