Conservatives are being cast out. It’s a narrative we’ve seen repeatedly, one which has been echoed in this very newspaper. Conservative voices are stifled by campus liberalism and they live in fear that should they “come out” as conservative, liberal friends may cut them off. One should never let politics dictate friendships, they insist. But what if those politics impact lives?
Take, for example, the Republican stance on LGBT rights. While marriage equality is now federal law, for many years it was not, and it was largely Republicans who lead the charge to keep it so. Donald Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to openly support gay rights in his campaign, but his running mate, Mike Pence, suggested on his website that the tax money going towards HIV research, which he claims “celebrate[s] and encourage[s] the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus,” should instead be directed to conversion therapy of gay people and said in 2006 that same-sex marriage signaled “societal collapse.” Transgender people are an even bigger target; President Trump recently tweeted that he would begin banning transgender people from the military.
Not all Republicans are transphobic or homophobic, and plenty of Democrats certainly are. But we must acknowledge that the Republican platform has, for generations, positioned itself as the defender of the “traditional family” against the machinations of the gay and trans people who seek to destroy it; even under Trump, the Republican party platform claimed that it wished to undo the federal ruling on marriage equality, claiming that the “traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society.” So if you tell a gay or trans person that you’re Republican, they’re going to assume that you’ve mostly voted Republican. That means that, intentionally or not, you’ve been voting for people who don’t want them to have the same rights as the general populace. Can you fault them for deciding that you’re not a person to be close with?
LGBT people aren’t the only ones who have to make this choice. If your family could never get health insurance before the Affordable Care Act is it acceptable to support people who want to see it repealed? If you know young people protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed children of undocumented immigrants to work and live in America, can you remain friends with someone who wants them returned to a country that they’ve never known and which may be hostile? Do you remain close to someone who’s supported people that, at best, view your protections as secondary or, at worst, don’t want you to exist? Sometimes that answer has to be no. Choosing not to associate with those with vastly different morals isn’t oppression against conservatives. It isn’t even unfair. It’s just a choice, and, unlike the choice to vote exclusively Republican, does not endanger any vulnerable people’s rights.