But everyone was reading between the lines during the July 5-14 gathering in Denver. But he wrote his meticulously balanced book as part of his own pilgrimage as an Episcopalian who also is gay. The religious sex wars rage on, but no one seems to be learning much, he said. But it has now become a given that any one to the right of center is automatically coming at this from a position of hate and stupidity. They're labeled as right-wing demons, which means they can be trivialized and treated with contempt.
Nobody has to listen to what they're actually saying.
Also, liberals and conservatives rarely acknowledge the schisms within their respective camps. This makes it even harder to find common ground or, when necessary, for people of good faith to break communion with one another. He never settles for a simplistic left vs. right showdown. There are, for example, at least three conservative camps, he said. Its leaders deny that a unique homosexual orientation exists and insist that homosexuals, at some point, make conscious decisions to sin, which leads to addiction and then to self-fulfilling homosexual identities.