Groucho Marx joked in one of his films, “Who are you going to believe…me or your lying eyes?” The essential problem facing the survivors, and for that matter the gay community at large when it comes to dealing with religious fundamentalists is this: they will largely, if not exclusively, measure what they see when they interact with gay people against what their theology is telling them is and is not real. For there to be any actual dialog that has to change, and the problem with that is that it’s their bedrock.

Shifting that bedrock would be a major personal earthquake in their lives, but that’s what has to happen before anything approaching real dialog can occur. That doesn’t mean we can’t talk to each other. It doesn’t mean we can’t reach some small areas of agreement. But the common ground is more limited here then I think people realize. It’s confusing in a sense to realize that the differences between us actually aren’t that many, because this one difference alone is profound and it touches literally Everything. It doesn’t mean we can’t talk. It doesn’t mean talk wouldn’t be a good thing for all parties involved. It doesn’t mean that it is hopeless. But folks need to understand that most of the talk between people who do not have a commonly shared understanding of what constitutes knowledge, is going to be talking past one another.

Just because someone can express sympathy, doesn’t mean they understand you, and it doesn’t mean they won’t stop twisting the knife in you. If they think that the more you bleed, the more they’re loving you, then out of a sincerely held compassion for you they are going to try to make you bleed. Before they can even begin to realize the harm they’re doing, they need to see beyond the clobber passages to the reality of our lives and our humanity and they can’t without their world literally shaking nearly apart in the process.