thoughts on dialogue and clash

spurred by Mr Sanchez's wrestling with liberalists on the matter of sexuality and Khatami's remarks on the necessity of dialogue with liberalism [notable is his idea about being wary of how one criticizes liberalism, as liberalism is the de facto religion of the west and a Muslim is not to insult the gods of others because, in so doing, they insult their own God [paraphrase of Khatami]].

Recently, The Reader had a front-page article ["His God doesn't hate fags"] featuring an Evangelical who has made it his "ministry" to enter into dialogue with homosexuals in a non-judgmental fashion and has garnered respect from both avid homosexualists and avid Evangelicals [including Moody, by the way]. In it, the reporter asks him whether homosexuality is, according to the Bible, a sin, and he admits, straight out, that it would be theologically sloppy to say it isn't. The next week, a letter to the editor appeared calling him a bigot and all manner of bad things followed by a call to abandon a Bible which teaches such things because they are based on antiquated and superstitious notions of what is natural. After all, and here's the kicker, masturbation was once considered harmful [or perhaps he said wrong?] and is now considered a normal [or perhaps healthy] part of adolescent development. I must have missed the memo: Christians still believe that masturbation is immoral, too. "Normalcy" is not a scientific label, it is a value judgment. He may even have said "healthy" instead of "normal", but the same is said of health. Science can in no way "prove" one ideal of normalcy or healthfulness is any better than another: these are philosophical questions. To appeal to what is normal or healthy begs the question, the underlying ideals are precisely what we are debating. Anyway: it seems the man being called a bigot is quite capable of dialogue and even occasionally garners the respect of those who could be called his "opponents" if he were clashing rather than dialoguing. Is the failure of dialogue in this instance on his end, or on the end which accuses him of bigotry? The end which assumes its own ideal of healthfulness and normalcy, or the one which only offers its offensive answer as a response to a direct question about theology?

One does what one can and then forgets about it.