I am in daily contact with gay, transsexual and transgender young people and their friends who state that at the very least the Church disapproves of them, or at the worst that it denies their existence (“Gender theory and gender reality”, 15 June). They no longer practise or explore the faith because they feel that the faith has no place for them. They feel abandoned by the Church and consequently have no interest in dialogue.

LGBTQ+ young people live in a world of self-loathing and confusion in which many documented studies show higher levels of bullying, stress, self-harm and suicide than those in the straight community. The LGBTQ+ community is one of the many marginalised and oppressed in our society. They are among the “poor”. Where is the Church’s option for the poor in this? David Albert Jones calls for dialogue. My young people would say, “Why bother? You can’t hear what I am saying.”
It seems to me that there needs to be a relationship before there can be useful dialogue.

In the Gospel Jesus I see someone whose encounter with a person was first to meet, then to look and love, then to offer words of healing or affirmation. I do not see someone whose initial encounter was to engage in a watertight theological treatise. Is it too much to hope that this could be a model for the Church to follow?