Reaching out to a Co-Worker

This happened several months ago. It illustrates an important point I often find when talking to people who are not gay-friendly, but not actively anti-gay, either: a lack of respect for my humanity, and the utter disbelief that this could be construed as offensive.


I work for a big company, one of the largest software companies in the world, and they are very supportive of diversification in the workplace. Consequently, they have non-work-related mailing lists for employees, one of which is a gay-related list, which I subscribed to when I joined the company just over a year ago. Postings are sporadic, generally quiet until someone posts, then there's a flurry of discussion, and then it calms down again.

One of the regular posters had posted a news item, and then made a generalization about right-wing Christians. Subscription to the list is not controlled, so there are several non-gay-supportive lurkers there, one of whom took the original poster (OP) to task for making generalizations that he (the OP) should know better than to make. Turns out this second guy (SP) and the OP know each other from one of the Christian lists (the OP being a Christian, though I gather he is considerably more liberal than most on the Christian list).

If the SP had left it at "you should know better than to do this", all would have been OK. But he went on to say that the entire premise of the generalization was false, because no Christians (right-wing or otherwise) would act this way or say these things (I forget now what the exact topic was). He then added that none of the Christians he knew would ever do something like this, so therefor his assertion must be true. A specious argument if ever there was one.

Well. As gay men and women, many people on the list had very different experiences than this fella, and we told him so. Some of us did it nicely and constructively, and some did it with scorn and derision (I started out in the former camp and made my way to the latter camp). The SP, quite naturally, fell into defending his position and it all degenerated from there, touching on gay marriage and other topics. At one point, the SP let slip which office he worked in and - lo and behold - he was in the next town over from where I worked, about 1.5 miles away. Something in how he was saying the things that he was saying indicated to me that he was trying to be sincere and trying to be supportive, so I decided to reach out to him, figuring that in a face-to-face meeting we could maybe break down some of the walls and get to understanding one another better. He suggested an Indian restaurant and, not being a big fan of Indian food, I accepted. I figured if I was going to have a sour conversation, I might as well do it in a place I had no intention of returning to (I didn't want to spoil my fondness for an eating establishment with bad associations).

By the time the appointed day arrived, most of the chatter on the list has died down, and people had moved on from that topic. I found myself wondering what in the world possessed me to make this gesture, and was there any way I could get out of it? Rhetorical questions, both. I met the guy at the restaurant, we exchanged pleasantries and sat down. At first the talk was just general, what do you do, how long have you been with the company, and the like. Fairly soon into the lunch, though, we got down to the topic at hand.

I explained that I felt he was genuinely trying to understand our point of view, but wasn't getting it, and I wanted to help him. In turn, I wanted to try and understand what it was he was trying to say. And all of that is easier face-to-face rather than via email, where many things can be misconstrued and taken out of context. He agreed, and said pretty much the same thing. So, we were both there for the right reasons. It turns out that he's not Christian at all, he's Jewish. He spends time on the Christian and Gay lists to try and get to know people who are not like he is. Score 1 for him, but as I am only too familiar with personally, the road to hell is paved with such good intentions.

Throughout this he was constantly using terms and expressions that gave the impression that he thought he was being 100% supportive (110% supportive, even) when in my view he was maybe being 50% supportive. Clearly there was a disconnect here. I saw pretty clearly what it was, and steered the conversation in a direction where I could point it out to him. Being the careful study of proper argumentative techniques in emotionally charged confrontations, I was very careful to use "I" statements, and not be accusatory, all of which worked well, I think, and we had a decent, civilized conversation.

What it boiled down to, basically, was that I felt that he did not value any gay relationship as being equally as valid as his straight marriage. Initially, he sparred around with words: "All relationships are valid, relationships with co-workers, between friends, a person and a pet -- all are valid." At one point he was directly comparing my relationship with my partner as being equally as valid as a child's relationship with a pet dog. And didn't understand how that could be offensive to me! I decided to take a different approach and tackle this more directly.

I asked, point blank, if he thought my relationship with my partner of 16 years had as much value and validity as his relationship to his wife. He said no, because of his religious beliefs it did not. OK, no way I'm going to win that argument. I asked him to recognize that we had to take religion out of the debate, which he readily agreed to.

I then tried for something a little different: did my relationship have as much value to society as his did? Did society have as much of a stake in supporting my relationship as it did his? He hemmed and hawed and again tried to mince words a bit. I tried to get him to understand the depth of my relationship with my partner, the love, the sharing, the growth. Could he understand that? Did he have any relationship which equated to that? He proceeded to tell me about a (non-sexual) relationship he had with a college professor, someone who inspired him, woke him up to the world, someone who he owed his professional career to, and essentially made him the person he was today.

Why did you equate my relationship with my partner to this person and not your wife, I asked? "Well, I picked the one person, beside my wife, who means the most to me in this world." He was very sincere in trying to get me to see how important this person was to him. Try as I might, I could not get him to see how our relationships should have been equal in value, nor how his comments on my relationship could possibly be construed as non-supportive, let alone offensive. The gap was too wide to bridge, at least in that one session.

In the end, I found an Indian restaurant that I enjoyed, and a conversation which was not as productive as I hoped, but also not as distasteful as I feared. I was glad I initiated the conversation, even if it did not produce the results I wished. We haven't met since, but I've been thinking about contacting him to see when we could do lunch again, the next time he's in town (he travels 90% of the time). I'll let you know how it goes, if and when we hook up.