I have a friend who went to the conference (as a delegate).
He was surprised at the content of the conference which he had no idea about. He was told it was about Christian leadership, but then found when he got there that it was about abortion and homosexuality. There were some extremely high-flying speakers giving their arguments, and my friend, who is of the Reformed persuasion, said that other Christians there (young people) didn't really understand the issues Christian concern or the American group were arguing for.
There seemed to have been a lack of communication or miscommunication as to what the event was about to those who went there.
As to the debate, it is so very hard to come out on one side of this debate. Personally, I do consider myself a Christian, but Christians, on the whole, are way behind the secular world in developing mature methodologies for understanding texts and language. Christians still go on about what 'the Bible says', but they can't account for differing interpretations and different hermeneutics which come up with different view points.
Simply put, what exactly, could a Christian have to object about a 'gay relationship'?
(1) 'Homosexuality' as such was not even coined until the 1870s, and since then dramatic change has happened in turning same-sex intercourse into a whole pathology which Christians now believe 'gays' need saving from.
(2) Can a Christian say they object to love? Just because two of the same-sex choose to live in a way which looks remarkably like a heterosexual nuclear family, can they then say it is evil? And whose fault is it anyway that 'gay relationships' do look like heterosexual ones (which then appear wrong and threatening)? Perhaps because in western society it is extremely difficult for people of the same-sex to be very intimate in any way other than to mimic the nuclear family.
(3) And what of the physical? Many self-identifying gay people don't even value the physical (sexual) very much, if at all in some cases. Is there something wrong with them? In some historical periods, such a relationship would seem like a good friendship with nothing to cry up about.
(4) Even if we get onto the physical- are we to condemn kissing? Even in very sexual acts there is a plethora of intentions and contexts which surround a sexual act. Some people engage in 'sexual' acts without any expressed emotional intimacy at all. And to get into the real core of it, any health specialist today will verify (especially for the man) about 'hidden' areas of pleasure. Who planted them if not God?
I think mostly Christians sometimes need to think what is really real about their arguments, and what is just discourse which they have inherited and passed on, which they use to tackle other discourses. Really, I have this image in my head of two people arguing using words and scripts about sexual identities and so on, and two people beneath them loving each other who have never heard of such words or arguments or anything. We need help to see what is real, and what is just rhetoric or discourse.
Mercifully God has come in Jesus (who is a person- not a book), and the Spirit is given to help us (via our hearts/minds) to intuit what is OK. And that isn't to say that we make mistakes- in Christian speak there is a 'war' and so on in us.
Although I don't agree with Christian Concern's actions, I can at least understand them, and empathise, even though I wish they'd try and do the same and realise that most of the energy they make is down to discourse fighting (and Jesus said not to fight at all).