Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

https://theboard.byu.edu/questions/85685/

This is a really tough situation and my heart goes out to this person.

I didn't post this question, but this is 100% my parents as well. I got an internship with the Democratic House leadership committee in the Utah Legislature a few years ago and I don't think my parents have ever been so disappointed in me. I distinctly remember my mother hanging up on me when I started to argue back. It stung. I wasn't even liberal! I was independent and had no definitive political leanings, but my parents are SO staunchly conservative. In most regards, anything that conflicts with their worldviews of any type are moronic, evil and influenced by Satan. I want to have a career in government, and that too is of the devil in their opinion. One reason my relationship with them has been so strained lately is that I don't bend to their worldviews and ways anymore and they have no leverage (like they used to) to try and force me to agree.

So I understand where the questioner is coming from. But at some point, as painful as it was, I just had to roll my eyes and distance myself from them. I refuse to talk about it, or when they do bring it up, I just put my foot down and say "I would not like to talk about this right now. Can we please discuss XYZ instead?" And if they continue with it I simply say "I would prefer to talk without any contention. I'm going to go." and just excuse myself. At some point parents need to realize that their children are completely autonomous adults and they no longer have any say or influence on that child's life or views.

Sometimes parents are just incredibly close-minded, ignorant and willfully stupid, and as frustrating as it is, there's nothing you can do about it. I remember my shock and feelings of utter betrayal when I realized my parents were just normal humans, not all-knowing, always-correct demi-Gods...

My family members are more libertarian than typical Utahns, mostly being from Wyoming. And I am definitely a secular progressive but don't feel especially allegiant to the Democratic Party. This doesn't mean that we especially agree, it just means that there are some shared targets of our ire. ;-) All of us were sick of the Bush dynasty, though I think for largely different reasons. (My father, for instance, is a credulous conspiracy theorist, and thinks that Bush the First was part of a New World Order cabal.) I'm not enthused about voting for Clinton, but I will, and I might be the only member of my family to do so (my atheist, Millennial brother included).

I was far to the left of my family even as a practicing Mormon, so I have thankfully avoided the character slurs. In fact, I think they see progressivism and being an "intellectual" as part and parcel, and they've always known I was an "intellectual." My mother thought it'd just be part of the natural order of things that I'd go to the East Coast and become a godless liberal. It's amusing that I did so at BYU.

Talking politics is still deeply frustrating — prayer in schools, gun control, anything even slightly progressive on LGBT issues: they're all non-starters. But I don't call them "stupid," and they return the favor.

Some common ground we've found is the terrible state of Utah education, air, and cronyism. We have very different proposed solutions, but I'm glad they haven't drunk the legislature's Kool-Aid.

They hate Trump and Clinton equally — not unfairly, I think they view them both as part of a corrupt establishment — so we'll see if things get more heated the closer we get to November.

I enjoy debating by nature, so we'll see if I get restless around a homogeneous group that largely shares my views. Living in Madison, I wondered really how socially liberal I am — when I defended Romney, it was like I was defending the "great Satan"!

My best friend JoJo's parents like this, too. She has had to set some pretty firm boundaries with them about not talking about politics or religion and it's been really hard on all of them. (See this question)

My dad is pretty conservative, but it doesn't bother him significantly that I'm liberal-leaning and my husband is a straight-up Marxist.

One of my favorite internet advice-givers is Captain Awkward, who has lots of good advice on how to set boundaries with parents in situations like this (full disclosure, the site uses lots of un-BYU language for those who are concerned about that). The gist of a lot of the advice is that once you're a financially-independent adult your parents really have no power to compel you to do things or act in a certain way but you still have the power to determine how often you communicate with them, and you should not feel like you're being a horrible son or daughter if you refuse to communicate with them when they are not being respectful of your reasonable boundaries.

my grandma is very much like this, to the point where she flat-out said something like Obama is the antichrist or something like that. Luckily she doesn't push her political views on me very much any more; maybe she just got tired of disagreeing with me. But I pretty much try to change the subject to something I am interested in (non-politics) with her.

I fear for the blood pressure levels of Glenn Beckistas once an actual liberal gets in the white house this fall ...

My parents too have struggled greatly with me being liberal. As I believe I've stated on this board before, one family reunion once devolved into everyone sitting around telling me how wrong and sinful liberals are while my mother sat by and grinned.

Something that has worked well for me is that, despite living within a 20 minute drive, I rarely see my parents any more and we don't call, text, email, Facebook, etc. Lack of communication means that when we do see/talk to each other, we're much more likely simply talk about recent life developments and such instead of having the leisure to stray to controversial topics. I also engage them on topics they like - today when we visited for my mother's birthday I brought up my upcoming choir trip to my mother and invited her to our next concert, and I showed my dad my recent photos on Facebook. It also helps that I'm usually seeing them surrounded by the rest of my siblings as well, and with Marduk, who I think they're both a little wary of engaging with politically.

I'm just going to put this here:
http://time.com/3092496/andrew-wk-libe ... publicans/

maybe you've seen it, maybe you haven't.

I'm not saying the reader is saying their parents are assholes, but it's still good advice.

I think focusing on compassion is great for families, and the advice is pretty good. It seems like some people base most of their identity around their political ideas though, so it can be difficult to think about something else to talk about. My dad listens to conservative talk radio all the time, and most of the books he reads are political in nature. Luckily he does have a few other interests (although I'm not great at talking about stocks and I hardly ever watch classic movies anymore). I keep thinking that I often reduce my dad to his political opinions, but he's more than that--I just hardly ever hear about the more.

We can thank Ezra Taft Benson for this particular strain of political conservatism wedded with Mormonism. He was a vocal member of the John Birch Society throughout the 60s and 70s and wrote lots of polemics warning of the satanic influences of Communism and the Civil Rights Movement. Some of these ideas made their way into contemporary interpretations of the gospel in that era, even though there were plenty of other general authorities who vocally disagreed and censured him. If you want to read some shocking history from a liberal mormon perspective, read this article: http://www.mormonpress.com/ezra-taft-be ... d-politics

Cognoscente wrote:We can thank Ezra Taft Benson for this particular strain of political conservatism wedded with Mormonism. He was a vocal member of the John Birch Society throughout the 60s and 70s and wrote lots of polemics warning of the satanic influences of Communism and the Civil Rights Movement. Some of these ideas made their way into contemporary interpretations of the gospel in that era, even though there were plenty of other general authorities who vocally disagreed and censured him. If you want to read some shocking history from a liberal mormon perspective, read this article: http://www.mormonpress.com/ezra-taft-be ... d-politics

OH MY GOSH this actually explains a lot

As long as we're talking about extreme Mormon conservatism, we shouldn't leave out Cleon Skousen. (It's not too hard to trace the Oregon Yeehawdist movement back to his ideas, and I believe one of his more conspiracy-minded books was a direct inspiration for Ben Carson's recently deceased campaign.)

yayfulness wrote:the Oregon Yeehawdist movement

Okay, so, I'm really really into the Sagebrush Rebellion and its splinter groups. In fact, I may very well write my masters thesis on it.

And as the granddaughter of Wyoming ranchers, I think that the extremist tactics of one group have overshadowed the history and nuance of this movement.

I enjoyed both these articles:

From the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance - http://suwa.org/taking-public-public-lands/
From Vox - http://www.vox.com/2016/1/5/10718128/fe ... on-militia

Dan Savage had a segment on the Lovecast that was SO ON POINT about this issue.

After banging his head against the wall with his FOX-news listening father, he eventually decided that it was better to spend his energies convincing those who could be persuaded.

His dad knows who Dan votes for and vice versa, but when he and his husband and son are sitting around the Christmas table, he changes the freaking subject. Wise advice.

THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH SWEAR WORDS TO DESCRIBE HOW BAD THE POST-EASTER DINNER POLITICAL DISCUSSION WAS.