Here’s a step in the right direction: Dan and Me: My Coming Out as a Friend of Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A

We’ve (d)evolved into a world of bitterness, of ugliness. Where I’m right and you’re “fuck you!”. Where we preach and lecture, and never listen. It doesn’t matter what group you’re a part of or what labels you wear, you are guilty of this. I am guilty of this. People want to know what’s changed in our world that brought us to where we are now; I think this is a large part of it, and at least one of the root causes of our societal and cultural problems.

Shane Windmeyer is a 40-year-old gay man. He’s the founder of Campus Pride. He was one of the organizers of the protests against Chick-fil-A.

And thankfully, he’s a man willing to sit down and listen. As well, Dan Cathy, President and COO of Chick-fil-A is also a man willing to sit down and listen.

On Aug. 10, 2012, in the heat of the controversy, I got a surprise call from Dan Cathy. He had gotten my cell phone number from a mutual business contact serving campus groups. I took the call with great caution. He was going to tear me apart, right? Give me a piece of his mind? Turn his lawyers on me?

The first call lasted over an hour, and the private conversation led to more calls the next week and the week after. Dan Cathy knew how to text, and he would reach out to me as new questions came to his mind. This was not going to be a typical turn of events.

His questions and a series of deeper conversations ultimately led to a number of in-person meetings with Dan and representatives from Chick-fil-A. He had never before had such dialogue with any member of the LGBT community. It was awkward at times but always genuine and kind.

It is not often that people with deeply held and completely opposing viewpoints actually risk sitting down and listening to one another. We see this failure to listen and learn in our government, in our communities and in our own families. Dan Cathy and I would, together, try to do better than each of us had experienced before.

Reread that last paragraph.

In fact, don’t just reread that one paragraph because you will miss the depth of what happened. You need to read the full article.

Dan and Shane will not agree on some things, and neither apologized for their personal beliefs. But they both were willing to listen to each other, to gain understanding of the other and work to ensure they were understood. They both grew. They have both become better, and as a result, can use their position and influence to accordingly make the world better, even within their viewpoints and differing goals.

Now it is all about the future, one defined, let’s hope, by continued mutual respect. I will not change my views, and Dan will likely not change his, but we can continue to listen, learn and appreciate “the blessing of growth” that happens when we know each other better. I hope that our nation’s political leaders and campus leaders might do the same.

In the end, it is not about eating (or eating a certain chicken sandwich). It is about sitting down at a table together and sharing our views as human beings, engaged in real, respectful, civil dialogue. Dan would probably call this act the biblical definition of hospitality. I would call it human decency. So long as we are all at the same table and talking, does it matter what we call it or what we eat?

Emphasis added.