Anyway, I knew this topic reminded me of something. Took me a while to remember:

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Story?id=4053142&page=1

@JDRegent: If they’re unable to infringe on my rights, who cares? Hypotheticals are not a hill I’m willing to die on–I save my energy for the real conflict. I’d rather fight anti-abortion organizations and legislation than argue all day with a single person. It’s about choosing your battles, IMO.

Also, someone’s anti-abortion stance DOES NOT affect my uterus. Not in this country, anyway, thanks to the hard work of pro-choice advocates. Whatever they might LIKE to do to my uterus, they CANNOT. That’s an important distinction.

Judge much?

Your intolerance is not superior to “their” intolerance. It’s all just intolerance.

My roommate’s boyfriend voted for John McCain, and when I learned this he became someone that I could not be friends with. It’s not that he’s necessarily a bad person–I recognize that not everyone who votes Republican is a gun-toting woman-hating homophobic asshole. He voted for McCain because he felt that in a wartime situation, the government needed a president who had been in a war. Which, though I vehemently disagree, isn’t a dead-to-me kind of opinion.

But the fact is that John McCain was against abortion rights and any semblance of gay rights. As a bisexual woman dating a man, these are two points on which I am extremely, extremely sensitive. My roommate’s boyfriend, then, thought that it was more important to have a president who had served in war than it was to have a president who sees me as a human being instead of a baby-incubator. He’s not anti-abortion or anti-gay; he just doesn’t really care enough about either of those issues to vote democrat (or other). Which is an ideological hierarchy that I am not comfortable with.

My grandmother is the only conservative person I love. My brother works for a republican and thinks that Ann Coulter is awesome and that Bill O’Reilly is smart. My whole family thinks I’m going to burn in hell because of my politics and my lack of church-going–and they don’t even know that I identified as “basically gay” before I met my current boyfriend. I don’t mind that they think I’m going to hell because I don’t go to church–their opinions have no affect on the actual state of my soul or afterlife options. But that my brother worked agsint, that his boss voted against, that my brother raised money for and actively campaigned against the gay marriage bill in NY is not the same. He actively is trying to fuck up my life, whether he knows it or not. And this stuff isn’t like a reveal–”surprise! I’m a queer and your daughter and it turns out that Gays aren’t the Other that you thought they were! Let’s eat some pie!” Because it’s more like, “Surprise! Your family hates gay people more than they love you! It’s not that gays are just like us, it’s that YOU are ONE OF THEM.” I still buy my brother the requisite Dave Mathews Band CD for christmas every year, but I’m not close to him, I don’t like him, and I don’t really love him either.

It’s not that all conservatives are bad, but I can’t be friends with someone who is against abortion, because they vote, they vote their beliefs into office, and then those politicians that they put into office prevent me from controlling my body. Their anti-abortion stance (even if they’re not activists) directly affects my uterus. I mean, jesus, I can’t even be friends with people who don’t at least recognize that being a vegetarian is morally superior to eating meat (I’m not a vegetarian) because of environmental reasons. How the heck could I be friends with someone who thinks that my body isn’t mine? Or that gay people are fundamentally different from straight ones? Or that their religion should affect their government?

Becky, you said, “she’s a very kind and loving person, and easy to get along with”

The thing is–I think that being against gay marriage is fundamentally incompatible with “kind and loving.” Being against abortion–maybe less so, I think that there are loving people who think that abortion really kills babies and do everything they can to stop abortions (including providing BC and helping pregnant women get through their pregnancies and stuff). But being against gay marriage is bigotry*, and there’s no love in bigotry.

PS. I don’t mean to dis your friend or your friendship. I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with this. Like, how can I love my mother if I know that my mother would disown me if she knew I am queer? How can I stand my brother if I know that he actively campaigns against abortion and gay marriage? The only one that I can actively deal with is my grandmother, even though she is her city’s Women’s Republican Club president. She’s also 75 and will be like, “No! Abortion is wrong! But you know obviously there are times when someone needs to get an abortion, so I don’t think it should be illegal or anything.” Which I know is contradictory, but…she’s my grandmother. But I didn’t pick her to be my grandmother and half raise me. I don’t think I would have, as much as I love her.

*Unless you are all radical, like, “Why do the gays want to marry? ABOLISH ALL MARRIAGE!” like in Itty Bitty Titty Committee.

Still, I think it’s useful to consider the various arenas in which we get to know one another. I’ll talk to anyone in a public forum—and that includes the hater. I won’t, however, invite that person into my home. The difficulty for me is in deciding who counts as a hater. The racial supremacist is an easy call; what of the person who has views about women or LGBT folk which I find obtuse? They don’t take pride in their phobias, but they don’t necessarily see them as problemmatic, either. And what of the person who you got to know in a work or in a social setting, and only later found out had those phobic views?

I tend to think that if you like a person, why not go with it? In other words, be generous with both that person and yourself: Open yourself to that person, and ask her about herself. Maybe you’ll find you’re not really all that companionable after all, but maybe you’ll discover a funny, kind, complicated friend who’ll piss you off sometimes. Maybe the complications will be worth it.

I grew up in a small midwestern town where I was known as ‘the radical’. Most of my peers didn’t care for politics, and of those who did, a fair number didn’t care for my politics. No matter. We ate brats and drank beer and argued and danced and dragged one another into adulthood. It wasn’t a bad way to grow up.

It’s still not a bad way to live. I get that not everyone wants such complications, but now, living in NYC, I miss them. I’m glad that most people I know share my political views, and yeah, I can (and do) visit conservative websites for a hit of reality from the other side. Still, I miss how the friction of alternate political and religious sensibilities can inform, and even deepen, a relationship.

And as for the question about maintaining a friendship with someone who thinks you’re going to hell, well, I know what that’s like. Frankly, I think it’s harder for her to believe that people she loves will be shut out of heaven than it is for me to know this.