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So there's a dirty little secret in my life that I've been unwilling to admit until right now. Despite being a dedicated conservative, a serious libertarian, someone who occasionally refers to "liberal" as a "four letter word," I...well...I only date Democrats.
Okay, so it isn't exactly a policy as much as it is fate. Back in high school, my boyfriend was a football player who wrote for the school paper and we used to do op-eds together where he'd take one side and I'd take the other. It was cool at the time because it felt so anti-Establishment.
Then in college, my boyfriend was an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war who wore a big pin on his coat, and although he ended up being a jerk for other reasons, I never held the disagreement against him; in fact, it helped me build up my argument (he was a pretty easy pushover, though, so it didn't end up being such a big deal).
And then there's the man in my life now -- the serious one. He's...um...a registered Chicago Democrat who backed Joe Biden in the primaries.
I have to admit it, the political differences are kind of attractive.
I'm not alone, apparently. Right before the election, Christian Science Monitor columnist Anita Bhorjee Delahay revealed that her marriage was actually an holy union across the red-blue divide, something that started out contentious, but ended up giving both of them a handle on each others ideology that led to greater cross-party understanding...
I thought I knew about cross-cultural relationships when I entered into one of my own: I married a Republican. I soon found the culture clash between a red and a blue voter rivaled that of my parents...I would sit in my car after work listening to NPR, and Mike would stay up late to watch Fox News. This was about the same time that many of my friends abandoned me for dating a "fascist" and began guessing how long it would be before I started voting like Mike...
Through time, a wedding, and a looming addition to the family, Mike and I found that our different strengths and backgrounds generally worked to our advantage, so we revisited politics.
As we discussed the Second Amendment, this time in a face-to-face conversation, I realized that his support for gun access was not based on vigilantism or misplaced aggression, but rather on his desire for protection and his concept of freedom. I began to see how our political views grew out of our personal histories.
In a sense, it was very similar for me. I met my significant other in a very conservative environment, so I immediately assumed that he shared my exact philosophy to a tee, only to find out that he was probably the most liberal person I'd ever met (at least at first blush). He opposed the Iraq War, hated George W. Bush, railed against Republicans (though he admitted to being one at one time), and had a commitment to social justice that would practically give me or any libertarian a rash. But I liked him and he liked James Bond movies, so we kept going out.
And like Anita, I found something very interesting out about myself. Instead of ignoring politics and assuming we always knew what the other was thinking, we got into deep discussions, talked about our own philosophies and came to find that our beliefs both stemmed from a shared commitment to humanity that had been instilled in us by our parents. Through our discussions we both became more tolerant, more moderate, and more willing to see the opposite side as a set of ideals and reasons rather than a pile of bumper-sticker logic wrapped in a stereotypically prickly personality. As Anita found out about her husband, we discovered that "Although [we] want the same basic things, our perspectives cause us to prioritize national issues in very different ways."
It also caused me to see my opposition as human, because if I wrote off my opposition as nothing more than "stupid," "wrong," or "Communist," I had to admit to myself that I was writing off the person I loved as all of those things. I know in my heart that he's not stupid, certainly not Communist, and while he's wrong on a lot of things (like whether he should wear sweater vests, clean his car regularly and the entire subject of home decorating), I can't bring myself to say that he's completely wrong on....everything.
Earlier this year, six conservative women who
