An acquaintance on facebook posted this yesterday, and it spurred a big range of thoughts and is inspiring me to write a blog post for the first time in just about forever!
"My dad was always a republican. At some point he saw how republicans treated his gay son and sister. He never voted for another republican in his life. That’s what you do when you love someone. Our relationship was far from perfect but he obviously loved me because when you love someone and your political party is trying to take away your son and sisters human rights you do the right thing."
First of all, I fully support the right of anyone to love and marry whomever they want. I have very close friends and family who are gay. Who you choose to love/marry/sleep with has absolutely nothing to do with how I judge you as a human. I also don't see why the government should have anything to do with marriage at all, but I digress... ;).
Here's the thing though: making a statement like the one above basically says, "your support of my right to legally marry the person I love is more important than any other factor you could consider and if you don't vote for x you are a bad person and don't love me".
Let's ponder a theoretical extreme. What if I have two parties to choose from. Party A believes that gay people shouldn't be able to be legally married and will likely work towards laws that enforce this belief. Party B believes that we should initiate nuclear war with China, which I believe will send the world into an extremely dangerous WWIII and endanger billions of lives possibly including that of many of my family and friends. Would you really ask me to vote for Party A because "when you love someone [...] you do the right thing"?
Or how about this option? What if Party A wants to overturn Roe vs Wade and remove federal protection for women's right to make decisions about pregnancy termination. I have had an abortion and am firmly pro-choice (http://gaiamarrs.blogspot.com/2016/09/choices.html) and don't want to see these rights limited. But let's say that Party B has fiscal policies that I believe will lead to hyper-inflation, significant hardship and a major decrease in the quality of life for most people in our country, as well as questionable economic and civil stability in my daughters' future. Now I am in the position of choosing between federally protected access to abortion and the overall stability of our country and economy. Knowing that we will do our very best to provide our girls with a good education, financial stability and the knowledge to navigate the world and make decisions, which option is more threatening to their future? What about when we take into consideration all the other girls and women out there who might not be as well prepared to face the world as we hope our daughters will be? These would be tough decisions and I truly don't believe there would be an obvious answer of how to vote in order to "do the right thing".
As someone who is on the "z-axis" of politics (I don't agree with a majority of positions of either major party), the sort of statement made by this acquaintance makes navigating relationships very tricky. While I often have more in common with the general liberal population as far as hobbies and lifestyle, I find that in general liberals tend to be much less accepting of differing opinions compared to conservatives. Statements like the above are common - assertions that there is one right way to think/vote/believe and that if I come to a different conclusion I am a bad person.
I did not vote for Trump, but it does make me sad that if I made that choice (perhaps for a similar reason to my examples above) that many friends of mine might feel that I don't love them or don't believe in their rights because I made that difficult choice.
