We are to be one in spirit together, but we are not. Nobody wants to go into that dark alley. We might lose something we value. But there is another, equal fear that is a shared or corporate anxiety, I believe. The issue of homosexuality serves as well as any other issue to illuminate this shared anxiety.
Fear is a lot about pain, but it is also about loss.
We fear the loss of health and well being, the loss of safety and security, or the loss of the known. Fundamental to our General Conference fear is that if such an issue as homosexuality is not resolved in the way that we believe it should be resolved, then the presence or absence of homosexuality in the church will cause the future to be different from what we would want to predict and to take part in. In other words, we might lose the future we have defined for ourselves, a future that motivates us, shapes our decisions and actions, gives us hope. So for the conservative, doctrinaire element of the church, increased acceptance of homosexuality in the life of the church will so pollute the Body that it will weaken and fail. Either way, the fear is a loss of the future, of purpose, of identity.