DULUTH, KS—Claiming it is “impossible” to get him to consider different points of view, exasperated acquaintances of local man Kyle Dunham told reporters Wednesday that the 34-year-old is completely unwilling to listen to even a single argument as to why homosexuality is an abomination.
Sources familiar with the account manager’s maddeningly rigid beliefs said that no matter how patiently and logically they present the extensive evidence demonstrating that gays and lesbians are systematically destroying society, the narrow-minded Dunham simply tunes them out.
“You try to have a rational conversation with him in which you carefully explain, point by point, how the Bible reveals that homosexuality is abhorrent and dangerous, and his eyes just glaze over,” said neighbor Alex Richardson, who told reporters he has never met anyone in his life so resistant to facts that contradicted his preconceived ideas. “Even when I bring up something basic that most informed people agree on—like how a man who lies down with another man is condemned to eternal hellfire—he just shakes his head.”
“I could spend all day calmly and methodically spelling out what befell the Sodomites,” Richardson added. “But it all goes in one ear and out the other.”
Despite intending to do nothing more than engage Dunham in a frank but nonjudgmental conversation about his inflexible views, most of his acquaintances said they could not even broach the possibility that homosexuality was a vile obscenity without being immediately dismissed.
“If you even suggest there’s the slightest chance that gays are deviants who are unequal to heterosexuals, he just puts up this mental barrier,” said Dunham’s brother-in-law, Wayne Byers, who claimed his repeated efforts to educate Dunham about how all gay men are pedophiles was “like talking to a brick wall.” “Once he retreats into that mindset, forget it. You can counter every single one of his arguments with irrefutable Scripture all day, but you’re not getting through. Even when I try to tell him these aren’t just my personal beliefs, but the consensus opinion of leading pastors and radio personalities, he’s still not convinced.”
“Honestly, I think he’s afraid,” added Byers. “Maybe if he opened his mind a tiny, tiny crack, he just might discover that it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”
Many speculated that Dunham’s obstinate behavior stemmed from an insular childhood spent cloistered exclusively among similarly close-minded individuals. Under these sheltered conditions, acquaintances told reporters, it might actually seem natural for him to doubt that gays and lesbians serve the Devil, that they are intent on converting all young children to homosexuality, or that their sexual orientation is actually a disease.
As a result, some said they tried viewing Dunham’s refusal to acknowledge even the most common-sense facts about homosexuality’s apocalyptic power with understanding and compassion.
“I just try to remind myself that Kyle’s not inherently a bad person, just an ignorant one,” said coworker Cathy Ramirez, who conceded that she occasionally walked away from a conversation with Dunham rather than listen to him repeat the same tired egalitarian talking points over and over. “If I was raised in an environment where I had no choice but to read something other than the Old and New Testament, I might share his same stubborn beliefs.”
But most who have come up against Dunham’s intractability told reporters that their sympathy quickly gives way to frustration.
“I just get so angry when I sit there citing clear-cut evidence like Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:27, and Corinthians 6:9, and I can already tell his mind’s 100 percent made up,” said Dunham’s former college roommate, Nate Dietrich, admitting he often rolls his eyes at the forwarded emails he receives from Dunham that make impassioned claims about homosexuality being a normal, natural behavior. “He’s just so trapped in his little sealed-off world that nothing makes a difference, nothing. I just want to shake him, you know?”
“One of these days, though, he’s going to have to leave that dark cave of his and accept that being homosexual is an offense in the eyes of God and will incur His righteous wrath,” Dietrich added. “Honestly, I don’t know how you go through your whole life living in blindness like that.”