Dawna

Liberal to a conservative family member: "One of my son's has a boyfriend and my other son is feminine and likes to wear makeup." Conservative: "Good for them. I hope they're happy, and I hope your son's boyfriend treats him well." Liberal: "But, don't you have a problem with that???" Conservative: "Why would I? They're living their own lives. I love them. I'm happy if they're happy." Liberal: "Well, I don't believe you." Unfortunately, I've seen this type of conversation all too often. Some of the liberals in my own family believe us conservatives don't care, that we're homophobes, bigots, racists, etc. They know we believe marriage should be between a man and woman, that men can't have babies, that transgenders shouldn't be competing in women's sports, that pronouns are stupid, etc. They use those beliefs and make it seem like we don't care about them as human beings. What we believe has nothing to do with what people want to do in their own lives. Those are our personal beliefs. We don't force our beliefs on to them, and we don't expect them to force their beliefs on to us. We love our family and want them to be happy. That's it. But, they have developed an opinion about who we are as people just because of our personal beliefs. They're immediately defensive and let their emotions guide their actions. If they only stepped out of their liberal bubble, they'd see that all we want to focus on is taking care of our own family. We don't spend our lives being angry about what other people think or believe. The only time we might get angry is when someone is trying to hurt our family or force their own opinions on us and change laws that take more of our hard-earned money out of our pocket. Typically, we just want to be left alone. That's how conservatives have always been. But the liberals in my family always want to argue about something, make a big issue out of nothing, act defensive over something that they fabricated in their head. I really don't get it, and I've stopped trying to understand them.