Posted February 25th, 2004 by Michelle

What do you do when smart people have confusing politics? This is a question that plagues me only occasionally, but when it hits, I am beside myself. Ian wrote in yesterday’s blog that 69% of Americans are against gay marriage. How many of that 69% are friends of mine? Not too many. In fact, I can name only one Republican among the people I talk to every week, and he drives me way up the forkin’ wall the second he gets political. I’ve largely surrounded myself with like-minded folks, and while that makes for fewer arguments at dinner, it also does little to change, you know, ahem, “the world”. My way of changing the world, I’ve always claimed, is one person at a time. And yet I spend vast amounts of time talking about really important stuff with people who agree with me totally.

But once in a rare moon I’ll find myself in company that disagrees. Conservative, Republican, and even worse, specifically anti-gay or anti-choice. These are thinking, intelligent people, in any other arena of conversation, so when they come out in defense of Bush, using Bush’s own poop-filled propaganda, I just don’t know what to do with myself. I know this is going to sound a little extreme, but I have a hard time thinking that someone who supports Bush is smart, or that someone who opposes gay marriage is kind, or that someone who is pro-life is thoughtful. Okay, okay, I know, I KNOW but I have a hard time with it. I have known examples in my life of smart Republicans and loving homophobes and caring pro-lifers, but it’s simply hard for me to swallow. They seem such contradictions in terms.

I used to say to Sean all the time when we were growing up that “everyone is entitled to their opinion”. I don’t know if I always believe that anymore. It was that psychopath’s opinion that he should gun down a doctor who performed abortions. It is our president’s opinion that certain people should be denied human rights because those people are biologically hard-wired to love others within the same gender. These opinions are so ugly, so perverse, so awful that I sometimes wish I could take that choice, that opportunity to have an opinion, and make it disappear. Irrational, I know. I want Gandhi’s opinion, and John Lennon’s, but I don’t want Bush’s or Powell’s or… or even the opinion of a friend from my trek of two summers ago.

I spent three months with a band of strangers during the summer of 2002. We hiked the American wilderness, highlighting public lands and encouraging a dialogue between different user groups of those lands. The majority of us leaned left; liberal and socially conscious as our days were long. But there were two major right-wingers, and we got into hairy, ugly, angry political debates. We are all still in touch via and email list, and I got an email from one of the two conservatives today that has left me sad. He is in his first years of college, very bright and well schooled. He was catching us up on his last year:

“Started up a new conservative magazine on campus,” his email began. Apparently the only problem with this new magazine is that a different, even more right-wing group started a mag at the same time. He wants his to be the most right-wing publication the students will read. His email continues: “Ran a fundraising letter drive for (name deleted) Students for

Life, the campus pro-life group, and netted almost $1,000. That was a fun time.”

What do I do with this information? This 20-year-old kid is raising money for pro-lifers? What could I possibly say to him. I can’t even write back, because all I would say is please. Please, please, please think about what you are doing. Think about what is important to you, in nature, in each other, in goodness. And as smart as he is, he would have no interest in talking to me about any of it. His type feels like a lost cause, even though he is a decade younger than I am. But at the same time, I don’t want to be friends with people who hate gay people. I don’t want to be friends with people who don’t care about utterly destroying what little natural, wild world we have left.

Anyway. I’m back in California, and the wind is howling, and all I really need is about 14 hours of sleep.