Listening to My Family Talk About Religion and Politics

While I was high some weeks ago, I got a prompting of sorts to reestablish a relationship with my dad, whom I haven't proactively talked to since he pissed me off six years ago. If you go back far enough through my blog, you can find some information about why he pissed me off. But even if I let that go, we still don't have the same beliefs, values, or interests, and he's not a safe person to open up to about personal things that don't fit his worldview, and I wouldn't likely choose to associate with him at all if we weren't related, so I really struggled to find the motivation or a reason why I should. Eventually I did reach out, and it turned out he and my mom were nearby visiting my sister who just had a baby. My sister said she got a prompting before she even got pregnant that the baby wanted to be named after our grandmother "for her valiant example." I'm sure the "valiant example" my sister has in mind is that our grandmother has stayed faithful to the LDS Church long after her husband and five of her six children left. Of course, it's easy for a woman born in the 1940s to not care about the LDS Church's racism, misogyny, or queerphobia. I don't have that luxury. But yes, it's cool that she sticks to her convictions.

Anyway, my parents came to visit me, my dad graciously fixed my bike with his engineering expertise, and then they let me tag along with them to visit my mom's dad in Idaho. They laughed goodnaturedly at my "White Dudes for Harris" cap, which I wore to be provocative. My mom said, "I could vote for Harris if she wasn't an idiot." I opted not to say anything about how Trump literally has dementia or how Harris handed his fat dirty ass to him in their debate. My parents recognize that he's a horrible person, but I'm sure they're still going to vote for him because they think Republicans are always the lesser of two evils. I think Trump's movement is the biggest threat to democracy and liberty that this country has ever faced, I'd rather get a blow job from a piranha than vote for him, and I've considered suicide if he wins. So my parents and I are from different planets. At least they're not hardcore MAGAts. If they were, I wouldn't even consider trying to have relationships with them.

Last night I briefly considered joining them, my grandfather, and my aunts in the living room, but they were just talking about church crap. My mom said she's encountered a lot of women in the LDS Church who put up with abusive husbands to keep the peace, partly because of the church's all-male leadership, so she gave a talk to tell them that's not okay. I appreciate that. I'm just perplexed that she recognizes the church's all-male leadership as a factor but still doesn't think it's a problem. The church absolutely creates a safe space for abusers of women and children to thrive. She mentioned one specific abusive man who ended up leaving the church, and her response to that was "Well, duh, he was obviously never 'all in' to begin with." I know that my parents both know about their church protecting child sex abusers and fighting against the victims in court, because I sent them an article about it when the scandal in Arizona broke two years ago, but they've been deafeningly silent about it. Anyway, most of that discussion was about more benign church stuff that I just don't give a crap about, so that reminded me how isolated I am in this family.

Then somehow their discussion transitioned to politics. My grandpa, who watches Fox News, complained that society is really bad lately, about pretending  that men and women are the same when they're not the same. When people say that, they never seem to elaborate on it. What roles or rights should men and/or women be denied in society because of their differences? Honestly, it wouldn't be a bad idea to bar men from being doctors or cops, since it's been proven that female doctors and cops both kill fewer people. To his credit, my grandpa also said, "Not all men are the same, and not all women are the same." That's something I don't hear very much. It kind of goes against the LDS Church's "men are providers and women are nurturers" crap. Then there was some allusion to liberals' inability to answer the question "What is a woman," but fortunately it didn't verge into explicitly transphobic territory that would have pushed me to jump in and say something regrettable. I have a transgender sibling whom my parents consistenly misgender, but they're not raging assholes about it like most conservatives.

Then my dad said people forget that the United States is a republic, not a democracy, and people who want to abolish the electoral college are wrong. At this point I had to jump in because it's bullshit that the same seven states decide every presidential election. He said that California and New York shouldn't get to control everything because of their population sizes, but I don't see how Wisconsin and Pennsylvania controlling everything is an improvement. He was adamant that individual states should have most of the power and the federal government should stay out of their way. Right or wrong, I think he lost that argument centuries ago, and I feel like in his worldview, it would make a lot more sense for each state to just be its own freaking country. If we did that, of course, the same states that currently ban reproductive freedom, abortion rights, and quality education would still be racially segregated too. Anyway, I didn't argue for very long because it would have just been unpleasant for everyone involved, but I had to say something because "swing states" should not be a thing. He used healthcare as an example of something the federal government has no right to be involved in, and I restrained myself from saying how much I hate living in the only developed country in the world without universal healthcare. My 60-year-old roommate is getting evicted because she's broke from medical and dental bills. I don't go to the doctor. I could already have cancer and not know it.

Anyway, I can't relate to these people at all. I certainly don't think I have to agree with someone on everything to get along with them, or that I should live in an echo chamber, but I don't know what there is to even talk about with people whose worldviews are so alien to mine, particularly when the people they vote for are working tirelessly to destroy human rights and create a theocracy despite their claims to be about "freedom" and "small government." My dad says he appreciates living in "a free state" now, even though Indiana bans books, abortion, mairjuana, and gender-affirming healthcare. I don't want to live in that version of America. So after last night, I just feel lonelier than ever.