LJ Idol Season 9, Week 13: Open Topic

[copyright1983]

Middle GroundI have friends on Facebook who span the political spectrum. Some are very conservative, bashing Obama at every turn and posting patriotic pictures and Bible verses every chance they get. Others are highly liberal, blasting the Republican Congress for being ineffective and sharing economic studies and pictures from Pride parades all

Comments

[cheshire23]

About the only thing that seems to even marginally have a chance of working in that situation has been to let them get to know me as a person before they find out that I'm not straight. And even then, if they're so far gone that they truly believe that I ought to be stoned to death...well, I'm not going to be looking for common ground there, I'm going to be running the heck away because that is not a safe place for me to be. There IS no high road, and I'm NOT going to debate that for my own safety's sake.

There are a few issues where the line is that clear. When there is realistic physical harm at stake (as in the case of the followers of Michael Pearl, who have in multiple documented instances beaten their kids to death for "defiance") or when someone truly believes that someone else's beliefs or (not-physically-harming-others) actions mean that they deserve to DIE, then no, the truth is NOT "somewhere in between."

The amount of pushback you're getting here is probably coming from folks who've experienced this kind of "disagreement" - which I'm guessing is something that's new to you.

[copyright1983]

You're right that I've never experienced that sort of disagreement myself, though I've known people who have. But it's hard to really understand how that feels without having experienced it myself.

Maybe I'm being stubborn in my belief that there has to be a way to reach these people. Leaving them to just be wrong doesn't seem very humane to me--they may be wrong, but they're still people.