As someone that regularly associates with a lot of conservatives - gun nuts, Christians, businessy folk, rednecks, and so on, I not only disagree with you but consider my opinion more grounded in fact than yours. Certainly you've had all sorts of negative experiences, but I suspect folks' motivations are more negligent than malicious in most cases, and probably in more than a few cases are only reflecting your blatant disdain if not hatred for them.
If you could just explain to me, like a child, how voting for a party that explicitly has made it it's job to attack LGBTQ people is somehow more "negligent" than malicious? You're using weasel words to downplay the damage these people are doing; even if i accepted your claim, at absolute best they are enabling it and at worst they don't care, and of course you'd consider your opinion more grounded than mine, you've acknowledged that you've VOTED for that same party, now what does that say about your actions? Budging on this issue wouldn't make you look so good, you might have to confront some of the results of your actions, then you'd have to deal with the fact those communities that were attacked as a result of your vote might not look so favourably on your attempts to downplay the above.
Are you seriously telling me you had no inkling of what the ramifications and implications of your vote would be for those groups the GOP have historically demonized; that it didn't even enter your or their minds when voting and if even if it didn't, that somehow that lessens the damage? How would that hold up if we applied that to european ultra nationalist party that explicitly attacked roma or Jews?
Need i say more? Or am i going to have to sit here and have this bad faith conversation where i have to entertain the possibility that people can vote for parties that are explicitly against sections of society but that their voters somehow don't get the message, even when it's been as clear as it has in the case of the GOP?
Generations of the LGBTQ community are dead as a DIRECT result of Republican policy, ideology and cultural values and that stain transfers even to the voters of that party and it certainly doesn't wash off with any defense you've mounted so far. Own your sin, after all I have too and i and other LGBTQ people suffer much more than any Republican ever could for owning theirs.
What if he doesn't have an issue with locking up white children either? What if he really doesn't want to lock anyone up, but figures it is worth it to not fight it because it enables some other completely-unrelated-to-race-or-hatred-generally policy he favors?
What functionally is the difference between enabling, implementing and allowing racist policy or agendas? The end result is that people suffer all the same, if the best you can is say that he simply doesn't care then that doesn't bode too well for those that vote for that party or him.
And yeah you're right, I goddamn hate the Republican party, I hate them for what they've done to my community, to our country, for being kissing cousins with some of the worst bigotry that has existed in American society but at this point if you still can't recognize them for what they are, then that's your failure, not mine and im certainly not going to be friendly or even cordial to those that still make excuses for these people who have no problem turning a blind eye until it happens to one of their own.
These people aren't good people, at best they're indifferent to the suffering of others as long as they don't look exactly like them.
