I find it exceedingly frustrating trying to talk politics with religious people, particularly Christians.
They all agree that we should have freedom of religion, and freedom FROM religion. They’re glad that we live in a country where we have such freedom to live our lives as we please, without the fear of government forcing us to practice any one religion.
" Now, if we can just get this Obergefell ruling overturned and govern the country according to Biblical standards, according to what God wants, we’ll be in good shape."
I was just told by somebody dear to me (my mom) that she didn’t think that gays should be entitled to public benefits.
I asked her, “don’t you get to collect your deceased husbands social security check?” (She does.) “Don’t you think a legally married gay couple should get the same benefit?”
“No,” she answered, “because it says in the Bible that a man shouldn’t lay with another man. That’s a sin.”
I asked her, “If a person is atheist, why should they be beholden to what the Bible says?”
She respnded, “It doesn’t matter what they believe. It’s still not right and they shouldn’t get benefits that I have to pay for.”
The saddest part about all of this–she doesn’t even realize how hypocritical this is.
And this just seems to be representative of how most evangelicals feel. “You’re free to live whatever life you want to live, as long as it conforms to Christian standards.”
The problem in the U.S is that the average Joe/Jane Schmo living in the rural areas who has only went to high school is usually very religious and sets the Bible as their moral and ethical tool for guidance,yet is dumb enough to realize that any holy book is incompetent at the best scenario to address modern day problems.In the past, they burned homosexuals,witches ,scientists or whoever seemed like an unorthodox character type now these fools have to understand these books offer zero benefits at the best case scenario. In Europe, people are less religious and judge things based on their own intuition and common sense which provides better guidance on most occasions than some ancient books.
So, Mom is an absolutist - she thinks gays are bad people and should be excluded from all public benefits. Furthermore, the bible’s authority is absolute and therefore, cannot be argued against.
Obviously, this is a dangerously outdated mentality and should have no place in policy. On the bright side, people seem to be getting more open minded, even in the next generation of the same family, as shown above.
Yes, it is fascinating. Presumably what happens is that people on the extremes get so upset that they’re willing to just dump the idea of bargaining and democratic (in the non-partisan sense of the word) process in order to impose their views or escape their fears. Once you go there, what you want defines you less than what you are willing to do to get it.
The problem with the extremes is that one extreme keeps quoting the other extreme to prove to their base how people that don’t think like them are crazy, completely ignoring the silent majority in the middle. Ever notice how MSNBC takes clips from Fox to show their viewers how crazy the right is and how FOX shows clips from MSNBC to show how nuts the left is. They conveniently ignore the moderates as if they don’t exist.
I can usually take an argument in a group to make it an agreement in talking about religion. I mean it really all comes down to one thing - love. Politics - nope
FT - Its because our primaries are generally closed, if you had open primaries where people could select a candidate for republicans & a candidate for dems it would be very different id imagine. The system now provides incentives for politicians to pander to their crazy base on the left or right and ignore the center until the general then they usually veer towards the middle in an effort to pick up enough votes to win the EC. Maybe we should design a system that works from the center out instead of the other way around
It’s not any different than most Western democracies. Up here, when a political leader steps down, it’s only the party members that can vote for the new leader. It’s how it should be. The last thing a political party wants is the opposition determining their leader.
We also have polticians pandering to their base during leadership campaigns before moving to the center during election campaigns. I think the difference in the States is either the fringe elements are more vocal or they participate more in primaries relative to moderates.