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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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Can you date folks with different politics?

I watch this stream yesterday and i find it quite interesting. Im actually kinda in this situation now, i took a girl on a date, she made it obvious she was a progressive. I often dont share my own views on these things in real life, due to how toxic these conversations can be, so i just try to listen and empathize with where the person is coming from. Though im planning to open my mouth a little more about things on the 2nd go round, as to not give a misleading representation of who i am.

Whats interesting is that the streamer in question distinct "politics" from "human rights", she gives a pretty weak example with Roe V Wade. However i think the distinction between "politics" and "human rights" is shaky to begin with. No one really agrees on what human rights even are, per her roe example, gun control (constitutional arguably, but still) being another one, & there are still societies/people that arent accepting of LGBT although thats been on the decline over some decades. My guess is she is taking this to mean, "you probably shouldnt date a nazi", which is perfectly fine. But there arent a lot of those guys around in this day and age. For myself, i dont really believe any idea is above criticism, so i dont see how having a different idea of what constitutes human rights is much different from just having different politics.

According to pew research, most people, (myself included) are fine with dating people across the political aisle {note that many people wouldnt date a trump voter, but many would date a republican, but i suspect many people might view trump as a fundamentally immoral individual, and thus that makes him distinct from just mere disagreement}. I also find that peoples political beliefs arent good measures of how moral they are in real life. There are many progressives ive seen who were cheaters, liars, lazy, ect & conservatives who were kind hearted, hard working, & loving ect (& vice versa). But i want to know what you guys think.

I'm married. When I met my wife, she was "liberal" in the sense that she voted for Obama and was prochoice. Being prochoice hasn't changed. But she's abjectly horrified at trans children, BLM riots and the assault on free speech by progressives in Silicon Valley.

Lately she's been pretty depressed because it's like we're getting the worst of both worlds. Her prochoice preferences are being threatened, and schools are doubling or tripling down on secretly transitioning the children we are legally obligated to entrust to them. We're probably going to end up homeschooling ours.

Our governor recently said schools are no longer allowed to transition children in secret, and the usual chorus of the mentally ill cried out in outrage. Pretty sure schools are just gonna keep doing it anyways, and eat whatever lawsuits come out of it until a different governor switches things back. Same as colleges did with Title IX over reach. It's not their money they lose, it's ours anyways. So it's nice having a wife willing to make homeschooling her job.

I can't imagine how painful our lives would be if we didn't agree on not encouraging our child to mutilate herself. I hear about divorces where that's in contention from time to time, and I don't understand how every single one of those stories doesn't end in murder.

I'm pretty much in the same spot as your wife, and I still consider myself a liberal. I am also married to a conservative. He was a Romney-type conservative when we married, and has shifted right alongside the Republican party. It is difficult at times (especially during election years), but we are both very committed to the marriage.

That said, we are still aligned on basic values of how to live and raise our child. We try to tune out the political noise as much as possible and don't bring it up inside the house. This approach works well for us.