The Death of Discomfort

I heard a story about local politics on the radio this evening that interested me. I may not be getting the details right, but I think the gist of the story was that a county board member has called for a review of job qualifications for county employees. He did this because one county employee equated homosexuality with pedophilia in explaining why he thought the county shouldn't adopt a non-discrimination policy.

The part that struck me was the comment by the county employee. He referred to sensitivity training by saying (I'm paraphrasing) "People have to sit in these workshops and hear things they don't agree with."

At first I was appalled - actually I still am. How did we arrive at a place where people think they should only have to listen to information that is comfortable or that they agree with? But here's the rub - haven't we (lesbians/liberals/allies/social work-type people) helped create that belief? By insisting that people not say things that offend us? By screaming until things like sensitivity training developed?

So we've said "Don't say things that offend us" and we insist that people go to workshops so so they can learn what they shouldn't say because it will offend us - but the workshops offend those people. Does anyone else see the conundrum here? More importantly, I'd love to hear ideas about how one could possibly resolve the seeming contradiction.