When I was in college, I was escorted out of school for wearing a shirt that said, “Homosexuality is sin. Jesus redeems.” I was forced into meeting with the school counselor or risk being expelled.
A few years back, I shared a post about Chick-fil-A on Facebook. Throughout the wee hours of the night, my phone dinged as “friends” called me every name in the book. One even inferred that I’d cause my future child to commit suicide if they were gay. And that wasn’t the first time someone has used that accusation against me. It wasn’t the last time either.
In November, I voted for Evan McMullin. I couldn’t vote for a man I wouldn’t allow my wife and daughter. And I couldn’t vote for a woman that supported abortion past 40 weeks and supported using taxpayer money to do so. Trump won. Since then, I have supported and defended many of his policies. Many of my “friends” consider me a Nazi because of it.
And this is all par for the course when dealing with the Left. Name-calling, silencing with force, and threats against one’s family are normal. But I’m an intolerant bigot.
So it comes as no surprise that Chadwick Moore, a gay New Yorker, experienced the absolute vitriol from people that once considered him a friend when he came out as a conservative.
Most disconcertingly, it wasn’t just strangers voicing radical discontent. Personal friends of mine — men in their 60s who had been my longtime mentors — were coming at me. They wrote on Facebook that the story was “irresponsible” and “dangerous.” A dozen or so people unfriended me. A petition was circulated online, condemning the magazine and my article. All I had done was write a balanced story on an outspoken Trump supporter for a liberal, gay magazine, and now I was being attacked. I felt alienated and frightened.
He started to realize what those of us on the Right know as normal.
And I began to realize that maybe my opinions just didn’t fit in with the liberal status quo, which seems to mean that you must absolutely hate Trump, his supporters and everything they believe. If you dare not to protest or boycott Trump, you are a traitor.
If you dare to question liberal stances or make an effort toward understanding why conservatives think the way they do, you are a traitor.
It can seem like liberals are actually against free speech if it fails to conform with the way they think. And I don’t want to be a part of that club anymore.
I have tried over the months since the election to cross the canyon between my Leftist friends and me. Name-calling is the frequent result. They seem to have zero desire to understand the half of Americans that voted for Trump. To try to understand their fellow men and women. They prefer to scream racist, misogynist, bigot, and Nazi.
Republicans have, admittedly, struggled to capture the vote of the youth. But I have been seeing a lot more Conservatism coming from my friends in the last few months. People emboldened to stand against the hatred and bigotry of the Left.
If you want to lose your demographic, bullying people seems to be a good starting place.
Are we limiting free speech on college campuses? Are we raising thin-skinned, fools that cannot hear opposing ideas? I’m sharing a John Stossel video, because even the Left recognizes this.
Instead of learning a single lesson from Donald Trump’s upset victory in November, the American left has strapped on vagina hats and marched in the street, calling Trump supporters Nazis and ridiculing people of faith. The media has been positively enamored with it all and continues to refuse even to learn how to relate to the people who voted for Trump.
I have a friend on Facebook. He, his friends, and I had an interesting exchange last week. He claimed to not understand how people could vote for Trump. I explained it and he still didn’t understand it. They could have voted third-party— like I did— he claimed. He could not see voting Trump, in any case, better than voting not Trump.
You have to live for the next four years with those that voted for Trump. Just like they have to live with you. Calling your opponents Nazis and insulting their religion is not how you heal America. It’s not how you end divisiveness. How about, instead of stonewalling half of America and saying you cannot understand them while you have your fingers in your ears, you shut up and try.
The looming Trump presidency is their legacy, launched largely via backlash against their pseudo-religion of political correctness. Not to mention all their dumb colleagues that have wreaked havoc in our inner cities, presided over the systemic collapse of the nuclear family, and turned our schools into self-esteem parlors for the criminally mind-numbed.
For when you mistake, misconstrue, or malign your so-called countrymen with condescending labels of “ill-equipped” and “systematic racism,” simply because of the color of their skin, the only system that needs changing is yours.
I’ve continued to see my liberal Facebook friends call all those in flyover country racist, bigoted, misogynists. Maybe it didn’t sting as much when I lived within an hour of Chicago. While still a conservative, maybe they weren’t talking about me. But the condescending elite has even forced me to get behind much of Trump’s rhetoric. I’m sick of it.
When we, erroneously, stereotype the urbanites, we get reamed by the mainstream media, but shouting racist, bigot, and worse today is praised and honored.
A bully is a bully. No matter if it’s President-elect Trump or Derrick Rollins Jr.
Joanna and I have personal convictions. One of them is this: we care about you for the simple fact that you are a person, our neighbor on planet earth. […] We are not about to get in the nasty business of throwing stones at each other, don’t ask us to cause we won’t play that way.
I think we are all here for a reason. […] Jo and I feel called to be bridge builders. We want to help initiate conversations between people that don’t think alike. Listen to me, we do not all have to agree with each other. Disagreement is not the same thing as hate, don’t believe that lie.
Disagreement is not the same thing as hate. One of the most revolutionary statements today. We can agree to disagree. I can think that you are wrong. That doesn’t have to involve any hate from either side. We can respectfully disagree. Right?
If I misjudge people and am wrong, I want to be wrong having assumed the best about them. The bottom line is, I would rather be loving than be right.
This line here, Chip Gaines’s bottom line, is where I’ll leave this. I would rather be loving than be right. I don’t get into arguments to win them. I used to. It damaged many things in my life. I get into arguments to win souls to Jesus. I would rather lose an argument than lose a soul. Let’s readjust our point-of-views this year and fight for Jesus.
Haven’t heard it put this way. I will need to internalize it and to use this.
Why are we hated? Why is it that we should be not surprised when the world turns against us?
Because Cain hated Abel. Just one verse earlier John has spoken of these two brothers and asked why one murdered the other. Cain murdered Abel “because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.” Abel’s goodness exposed Cain’s badness. Abel’s righteousness convicted Cain of his unrighteousness. Abel’s love for God silently declared Cain’s disregard. Cain responded with the ultimate manifestation of hatred—he murdered his own brother.
Yesterday, Kate Aurthur at BuzzFeed maliciously targeted Chip and Joanna Gaines because they are Bible believing Christians. Aurthur’s article at BuzzFeed attempted to harm them and their television success because the church they attend supports real marriage, which BuzzFeed’s editorial policy decries as bigotry.
The bigotry against Christians has been discussed many times on this site, from Memories Pizza to Indiana’s Religious Freedom law. When business owners have to choose between their religious foundation or their financial well-being, the government needs to fix this.
Over the past several years, the gay mafia has specifically targeted Christian small businesses for harassment. Christian florists, bakers, photographers, t-shirt printers, pizza restauranteurs etc. have seen gay activists come into their businesses, made demands they gay activists knew would put these Christians in conflict with their religious beliefs, then turned to various state governments to punish those Christians who refused to violate their faith.
So what can we do? We have a representative government, so we can contact our congressment and demand that they represent us as much as they represent the 2-4% of the population that identifies as LGBT community. You can use this form to make it ridiculously easy to do so, and please do.
Trump was speaking for all Americans who are tired of being lectured by moralizing, power-hungry liberals who think either everyone agrees with them (there is no “silent majority,” only racists and bigots, really?) or must be made to agree with them.
Erick Erickson’s prediction of “you will be made to care” came true, but not in the way liberals would have preferred to make everyone care. It happened at the ballot box and now they’re incensed that we care.
Nobody likes to be gratuitously lectured. Every time the left does this, they’re just committing cultural Hara-kiri. But instead of apologizing for such boorishness and condescension, they ominously say stupid things like “Trump has opened Pandora’s box, and we’re looking for hope at the bottom.”
As I said a little over a week ago, people are tired of the Left’s rhetoric that if you don’t agree with them, you’re a bigot, racist, misogynist. But they don’t get it. Not yet. The pendulum has swung.
I published this on Facebook two years ago. At times I look back at what I have written and question my wording, other times I look back and see a fire that I never want to lose. This is a fire I never want to lose.
The town I grew up in was tolerant in a way I don't see often today. We accepted that others had different views than ours, even if we didn't accept their views. It didn't matter who needed help, my family would pitch in to help. That is the Christian way.
I was never taught to ask if someone was homosexual, adulterous, a liar, or anything else. I was taught to love my neighbor and my enemy. In fact, I didn't know of a single homosexual in my graduating class until friending them on Facebook and seeing it in their posts. Charlie was among my friends, Gordon someone I admired, and Dani was a sassy girl that humored me. Things that they did never mattered to us in my hometown. Not once.
I had a black sister since before I can remember. She wasn't my actual sister, just one of many that we adopted. I can honestly say that it never hit me until sometime in high school that she was different. The thing is, she wasn't. She was no different. Her skin may have been darker than mine, but it never mattered to me or my family. Not once.
Things are different today. The media is louder. More in our faces. Maybe I never realized the controlling voices of the floating heads before I was outside my li'l piece of the Midwest. They cry hate and bigot left and right. Words I never understood until the floating heads showed me what they meant.
Intolerance, they echoed, but not at those that caused problems, not at those that hurt people, not at those that called homosexuals faggots, not at those that called blacks niggers. No, they screamed it at Christians that said that Jesus was the way, that we all need Him that made us.
These people are the lovers that still stop and help a stranger. These are those with compassion enough to drop their privileged lives in America to travel to Cambodia, Croatia, and Bulgaria to help the widows and the orphans, building homes and spreading Hope.
The talking heads bring them into the spotlight and give them the Litmus test: Do you believe homosexuality is a sin? They don't care about anything else. And once the answer they already have is given, they shred them for being intolerant, bigotrous, and hateful. It's followed by every media channel echoing the same decree.
This is not America. This America scares me.
I shudder at night, fearing that if I speak my faith in the wrong corner that I will lose my job, my livelihood, or worse. But I will never say of my Lord "I don't know Him." I fear my Lord over all else.