On May 28, I said:
Some day perhaps I’ll understand my fascination with attempting to dialogue with folks with limited ability to listen or think critically.
In an online forum, someone innocently interpreted “folks with limited ability to listen or think critically” as a description of people who believe homosexuality is immoral.
Not so at all.
The statement applies to people who regularly spew presumption and bitterness against rival sides in the culture wars. People who believe, act, and react according to strawman arguments, when they could instead attend to disagreements with appropriate accuracy, clarification, respect and humility.
Culture warriors come in all colors, religions, and sexual identifications. They are united by intolerance — a refusal to show respect in one’s disagreement toward others. I am sometimes guilty of that, myself.
Ultimately the sides that I try to see, with mixed success, are not “progay” or “antigay” sides; they are “pro-war” or “pro-civility.”