#to my fellow Mormons: don’t do anything during this presidency that you will one day come to regret

[wandererslullabi]

SGA/SSA aren’t LGBT+ terms you should be using

In fact, they’re not even really terms from our community at all.

In this post I’m going to be talking about two terms sometimes used by some people in our community: SSA (same sex attracted) and SGA (same gender attracted). Note, however, that this post is NOT about SGL (same gender loving) which is a completely unrelated, lovely term created for and by black LGBT+ people. To clear things up, the SGA term is not based on the SGL term; SGA was already an entirely separate term based in violent homophobia, which I’ll speak on below.

So, what’s wrong with SGA and SSA, and why do I have the right to speak about it?

I was born and raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a church that until recently also went by the nickname “Mormons.” (Yeah, I know it’s a mouthful. Don’t worry, I’ll be using LDS, Mormon, or The Church for the rest of this post.)

This church has a very long, horrible history of homophobia and transphobia which continues to this day, and they’re known for using the SGA/SSA terms to describe LGB+ people, to the extent that the SSA and SGA terms are considered fairly taboo in the queerstake community (queerstake  being what much of lds LGBT+ call ourselves). I grew up hearing the SSA/SGA terms with lot of negative connotation, and to put it shortly, the church has for a long time “encouraged” lds LGBT+ people to call themselves “same sex/gender attracted” instead of LGBT+.

This statement, by the church leader Dallin H. Oaks (more on him here in a post by a gay mormon) is a pretty good example of the kind of rhetoric they use to encourage this: “We should note that the words homosexual, lesbian, and gay are adjectives to describe particular thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. We should refrain from using these words as nouns to identify particular conditions or specific persons.” (x)

This kind of rhetoric is repeated so often in the church that “same sex/gender attracted” is the way a majority of cis straight lds people refer to LGBT+ people aside from negatively using the word “gay” or “homosexual.”  They often use it talking about how we “suffer” from SSA/SGA, are “afflicted” with SSA/SGA, “struggle” with SSA/SGA. Instead of being gay, we “have” SSA/SGA.

It’s used as a way to essentially brainwash LGBT+ lds people into distancing ourselves from the LGBT+ community and further envelop ourselves in the church’s “you should repent from your homosexual behavior” mentality. The two terms are used fairly interchangeably; I’d argue SSA is used more often, but SGA is starting to get used more as well. In any case, it contributed to my younger self’s phase of “I won’t label my orientation” because I’d been trained to think that if I didn’t label it and I kept doing what the church said, my attraction to girls would either go away or I could just ignore it. Which, uh, didn’t really work, seeing as I’m extremely queer now.

A church university called BYU has, in particular, been homophobic to an extreme, actively participating in anti-LGBT+ efforts. In fact, they’ve been ranked one of the least LGBT friendly universities in the entire US! What an incredible achievement! You can read the history of their homophobia (and some transphobia) in this article (including a fairly extensive timeline from the 1950s up to the end of 2018). To sum up some of the really bad parts, though (the sources are in the link):

They repeatedly banned LGBT+ people from their university entirely, then banned students from being openly LGBT+, and are suspected of firing several staff members for being gay, as well as for suspending and expelling students for dating or kissing people of the same gender

In the 60s through 70s, they began administering “electric aversion therapy” in order to “cure” LGB+ students (this “therapy” involved showing gay people nude pictures of the same gender and giving them electroshocks in order to make them associate those feelings negatively). This method was ineffective at making the LGB+ people straight (obviously), but the people who underwent it reported extreme decrease in mental health and increased suicidal thoughts. At one point this therapy was required for anyone suspected of being gay. The therapy ended in 1983, but only because of the overwhelming reports that it wasn’t working.

In 1965 there were 5 reported suicides of gay Mormons at the university in a single year, and the LGBT+ Mormon suicidality in Utah has continued to be high. 

In the 70s, when Dallin H. Oaks was president of the school, he created a surveillance system to “catch” LGB+ people, including literally spying on gay bars and implementing recording devices to watch for any suspected LGB+ students, as well as posting fake gay advertisements to “ensnare” them.

Dallin Oaks also helped create the Institute for Studies in Values and Human Behavior, which was dedicated to proving that being gay was a choice, in order to re-affirm the church’s stance on homosexuality at the time. The freaking director of the institution, Allen Bergin, once said that homosexuality was “caused by some combination of biology and environment.” (thankfully, the church no longer believes being gay is a choice, though they talk about how “SSA/SGA behavior” is a choice as often as they can.)

I suggest y’all also read the Payne Papers (aka Prologue), which was written by two gay BYU students in 1977 in response to a homophobic professor at the university.

In 1997 there was a poll where 80% of students said they wouldn’t live with a roommate attracted to people of the same gender.

“In 2000 a reported 13 students were suspended from the University when caught watching the TV series Queer As Folk. The next year two gay students (Matthew Grierson and Ricky Escoto) were expelled under accusations deemed ‘more probable than not’ of hand-holding or kissing.”

In 2005, The Foundation for Attraction Research (FAR) was founded, run by mostly BYU professors. In 2009 the organization published Understanding Same-Sex Attraction which advocated therapy to change sexual attraction (evidently they didn’t learn their lesson lol).

In 2014, a BYU survey to students only gave the option of “heterosexual but struggles with same-sex attraction" or "heterosexual and does not struggle with same-sex attraction” for people’s sexual orientation. Y’all, this was only a year before same-gender marriage was legalized in the US. That’s just bad.

LGBT+ students are currently still facing risk of expulsion from the school if they hug, kiss, or date someone of their same gender. Celibacy is mandatory.

All LGBT+ groups are currently banned from meeting on campus, so there’s only a single LGBT+ group for the school that meets at a library in the city.

And of course, this is only what happened at a single Mormon university. You’d be surprised how much power the LDS church has, especially in Utah. Ya know Dallin H. Oaks, the homophobe? Yeah, last October he gave a homophobic and transphobic talk in front of over 4 million church members from all over the world.

During the course of all that homophobia at BYU, “same sex attraction” and “same gender attraction” were both terms used regularly in this therapy and in the church, alongside “homosexual.” And as I said earlier, they still use these terms today! In fact, if you wanna see them in action, you can just visit this page on their official website, which has “same sex attraction” right there in the title. The entire website continues to follow the implied idea of “we’ll tolerate you saying you’re gay, lesbian, or bisexual, but we’d prefer if you’d just say you’re same sex/gender attracted, because being gay/bi/lesbian is a lifestyle, and we don’t support it” and the whole website is basically “it’s okay to be attracted to the same gender, but it’s a sin to ever do or think anything gay!”

You can also just search the internet for “same sex attraction” or “same gender attraction” and a bunch of christian articles will pop up with rampant internalized homophobia among LGBT+ church members, and a bunch of homophobia from the church itself. It’s possible this SSA/SGA rhetoric isn’t specific to my church, as I haven’t researched other church’s histories as thoroughly, but the church absolutely contributed to anti-LGBT+ efforts throughout history, using “SGA” and “SSA” the entire time. This isn’t even a thing of the past, LGBT+ Mormons are still freaking here going through all this--conversion therapy is still not banned in Utah.

So, TL;DR: the “same sex/gender attraction” phrase was used in LGB+ conversion therapy, and is still used to perpetuate homophobic rhetoric in the church today. Because of that, a lot of my fellow LGBT+ Mormons are uncomfortable with the terms being used as umbrella descriptors for our orientations. So when someone tells you “SSA/SGA was used in Mormon conversion therapy, please don’t use it,” take them seriously. Yes, I understand that they’re sometimes helpful terms when talking about LGB+ identities, and I’m (sometimes) more okay with the usage of the terms than others, but in general, if you’re not a person affected directly by the church’s usage of these terms (read: an active LGBT+ Mormon or ex-Mormon), please don’t use them liberally, and don’t use them to freaking discourse about who does or doesn’t belong in the community. “SSA/SGA and trans” is not how you should be defining our community, I don’t care whether you’re an exclusionist or an inclusionist, just don’t. And you should never. freaking. use them. to refer to any LGBT+ Mormon who asks you not to.

And, last of all, as a bi person, y’all should not be implying that attraction to the same gender is the only thing about our orientation that makes us LGBT+. I’m not just LGBT+ because I’m attracted to the same gender, I’m LGBT+ because I’m attracted to multiple genders. My attraction to multiple genders makes me inherently Not Straight. Biphobia and monosexism is an issue that greatly affects mspec people, and it’s time monosexual LGBT+ people recognize that homophobia is not the only type of oppression we face. Not even to mention how SGA and SSA terms are exclusive of nonbinary orientations, which don’t always involve even having a same gender to be attracted to.

Exclusionists and inclusionists alike please reblog. Y’all need to listen up. Queer Mormons aren’t here to play.

[tindez]

In the end, the evidence was inescapable. “The president did in fact pressure a foreign government to corrupt our election process,” Romney said. “And really, corrupting an election process in a democratic republic is about as abusive and egregious an act against the Constitution—and one's oath—that I can imagine. It's what autocrats do.” [...] I found Romney filled with what seemed like righteous indignation about the president’s misconduct—quoting hymns and scripture, expressing dismay at his party, and bracing for the political backlash. [...] “I get that a lot—‘Be with the president,’” Romney told me, sounding slightly perplexed. “And I’ll say, ‘Regardless of his point of view? Regardless of the issue?’ And they say yes. And … it’s like, ‘Well, no, I can’t do that.’”

While I disagree with Mitt Romney on many things, I find it heartening to see a Republican who definitely thought this through and stuck to his convictions. Country over party! Kudos to him and to Utah.

So, I’m sharing this with y’all. Stay optimistic! Sometimes those we disagree with can still get work done alongside us.

(full article under the cut for those without access to The Atlantic)

POLITICS How Mitt Romney Decided Trump Is Guilty Comparing the president’s behavior to that of an autocrat, the Republican senator explains to The Atlantic why he’s voting to convict him. MCKAY COPPINS 2:03 PM ET Mitt Romney didn’t want to go through with it. “This has been the most difficult decision I have ever had to make in my life,” he told me yesterday afternoon in his Senate office. Roughly 24 hours later, Romney would deliver a speech announcing that he was voting to convict President Donald Trump on the first article of impeachment—abuse of power. For weeks, the senator from Utah had sat silently in the impeachment trial alongside his 99 colleagues, reviewing the evidence at night and praying for guidance. The gravity of the moment weighed on him, as did the pressure from members of his own party to acquit their leader. As his conscience tugged at him, he said, the exercise took on a spiritual dimension. Romney, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, described to me the power of taking an oath before God: “It’s something which I take very seriously.” Throughout the trial, he said, he was guided by his father’s favorite verse of Mormon scripture: Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good. “I have gone through a process of very thorough analysis and searching, and I have prayed through this process,” he told me. “But I don’t pretend that God told me what to do.” In the end, the evidence was inescapable. “The president did in fact pressure a foreign government to corrupt our election process,” Romney said. “And really, corrupting an election process in a democratic republic is about as abusive and egregious an act against the Constitution—and one's oath—that I can imagine. It's what autocrats do.” According to Romney’s interpretation of Alexander Hamilton’s treatise on impeachment in “Federalist No. 65”—which he says he’s read “multiple, multiple times”—Trump’s attempts to enlist the Ukrainian president in interfering with the 2020 election clearly rose to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” (He told me he would not vote to convict on the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress.) Romney’s vote will do little to reorient the political landscape. The president’s acquittal has been all but certain for weeks, as Republicans have circled the wagons to protect Trump. But the Utahan’s sharp indictment ensures that at least one dissenting voice from within the president’s party will be on the record—and Romney seems to believe history will vindicate his decision. He also knows his vote will likely make him a pariah on the right. Already, he says, he’s experienced firsthand the ire of the base. At an airport recently, a stranger yelled at him, “You ought to be ashamed!” During a trip to Florida with his wife this past weekend, someone shouted “Traitor!” from a car window. Eight years ago, he was the leader of the Republican Party, its nominee for president. Today, he has become accustomed to a kind of political loneliness. Romney famously opposed Trump’s candidacy in 2016, and while the rest of his party has fallen in line since then, he has remained stubbornly independent—infuriating Trump, who routinely derides him in public as a “pompous ass” and worse. As I wrote last year, this dynamic seems to have liberated the senator in a way that’s unlike anything he has experienced in his political career. Still, when the senator invited me to his Capitol Hill office yesterday, I was unsure what he would reveal. Romney had been largely silent throughout the impeachment proceedings, giving little indication of which way he was leaning. I half-expected to find a cowed and calculating politician ready with a list of excuses for caving. (His staff granted the interview on the condition that it would be embargoed until he took to the Senate floor.) Instead, I found Romney filled with what seemed like righteous indignation about the president’s misconduct—quoting hymns and scripture, expressing dismay at his party, and bracing for the political backlash. Romney confessed that he’d spent much of the impeachment trial hoping a way out would present itself: “I did not want to get here.” In fact, that was part of the reason he wanted former National Security Adviser John Bolton to testify about what Trump had told him. “I had the hope that he would be able to say something exculpatory and create reasonable doubt, so I wouldn't have to vote to convict,” Romney said. Still, he found the case presented by the president’s defense team unpersuasive. Romney had a hard time believing, for example, that Trump had been acting out of a desire to crack down on corruption when he tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The Bidens’ alleged conflicts of interest may have been “ugly,” Romney said, but it was never established that they warranted a criminal investigation. “No crime was alleged by the defense, and yet the president went to an extreme level to investigate these two people … and for what purpose?” The only motive that made sense, he determined, was a political one. Romney was similarly unmoved by the Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz’s contention that a president who believes his reelection is in the national interest can’t be impeached for pursuing a political advantage. “I had Professor Dershowitz for criminal law in law school,” Romney said, “and he was known to occasionally take his argument to its illogical conclusion.” Nor was the senator swayed by the theory that a president can be impeached only for breaking a statutory law. “To use an old Mormon hymn phrase, that makes reason stare,” he said. “The idea that Congress would have to anticipate all of the offensive things a president could possibly do, and then make them a statute?” Romney posed a hypothetical: What if the president decided to pardon every Republican in prison nationwide, while leaving every Democrat locked up? “There’s no law against that!” he said. “So it’s not a crime or misdemeanor. But it’s obviously absurd.” When I asked Romney why none of his fellow Republicans had reached the same conclusion, he attempted diplomacy. “I’m not going to try and determine the thinking or motives of my colleagues,” he said. “I think it’s a mistake for any senator to try and get in the head of another senator and judge them.” But as he discussed the various rationalizations put forth by other Republican senators, he seemed to grow exasperated. He took particular issue with the idea—currently quite trendy in his caucus—that Trump’s fate should be decided at the ballot box, not in the Senate. “I would have liked to have abdicated my responsibility as I understood it under the Constitution and under the writing of the Founders by saying, ‘Let’s leave this to the voters.’” But, he said, “I’m subject to my own conscience.” When I asked how it felt to be formally disinvited from this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, he laughed and noted that he hadn’t attended the conference since 2013. But it seems clear that his journey from GOP standard-bearer to party supervillain has been jarring. “I was under the misimpression that what brought Republican voters together was conviction in a certain number of policy points of view,” Romney said. He recalled a political strategist during one of his early campaigns explaining how to court the three main factions of the GOP coalition—social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and foreign-policy hawks. Much of Romney’s career since then has been spent trying to win over ideological purists on the right. In 2012, he said, some Tea Party activists refused to support him, because he didn’t have a plan to balance the federal budget within a single year. Now the conservative movement is ruled by a president who routinely makes a mockery of such litmus tests. Deficit reduction? “There’s no purchase for that,” Romney said. Foreign policy? “The letters with Kim Jong Un didn’t seem to frighten people away … The meeting with the Russian ambassador in the White House right after the election didn’t seem to bother people.” Somehow, Romney said, he is the one constantly being told that he needs to “be with the president.” “I get that a lot—‘Be with the president,’” Romney told me, sounding slightly perplexed. “And I’ll say, ‘Regardless of his point of view? Regardless of the issue?’ And they say yes. And … it’s like, ‘Well, no, I can’t do that.’” For now, Romney said, he is bracing for an uncertain political future. He said he can’t predict whether Trump will emerge from the impeachment battle emboldened or constrained, but he doubts the experience has shaken him: “I think what’s fair to say about the president is that he doesn’t change his ways a lot.” Nor is he expecting that their relationship will be easily repaired. (“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” he joked.) Romney acknowledged that his vote to convict may hamper his own ability to legislate, at least for a while. “I don’t know how long the blowback might exist or how strenuous it might be, but I’m anticipating a long time and a very strong response.” Though he said he won’t make an endorsement in this year’s presidential election, Romney was clear that he will not cast a ballot for Trump. But, he said, “under no circumstances would I vote for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to become president of the United States.” In 2016, he wrote in his wife’s name, and he told me, “She’ll probably get [a] second vote.” For months, Romney’s detractors on both the right and the left have searched for an ulterior motive to his maneuvering, convinced that a secret cynicism lurked beneath his lofty appeals to conscience and principle. Just last week, the Washington Examiner ran a story speculating that the senator might be positioning himself for a presidential run in 2024. When I asked Romney about the report, he erupted in laughter. “Yes! That’s it! They caught me!” he proclaimed. “Look at the base I have! It’s going to be at least 2 or 3 percent of the Republican Party. As goes Utah, so goes the nation!” The truth is that Romney’s decisive break with Trump could end up hurting him even in Utah, a red state where the president is uncommonly unpopular. What that means for his reelection prospects, the senator couldn’t say. (He doesn’t have to face voters again until 2024.) But as he thought about it, another hymn came to mind. “Do what is right; let the consequence follow,” he recited. “And I don’t know what all the consequences will be.” We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. MCKAY COPPINS is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of The Wilderness, a book about the battle over the future of the Republican Party.

[progressiveveteran-blog]

A Liberal Veteran in Trump’s America

I’ve struggled with how to fathom what happened on and after November 8th, 2016.  I watched as an election that was all but guaranteed for what was to be the first female president in American history – albeit a flawed candidate with some shady friends and family – all of a sudden shoot into the small hands of a xenophobic, tax-cheating, employee-cheating, tenant-discriminating, Islamophobic, misogynistic, ill-tempered, ill-mannered, always-privileged, and exceptionally spoiled man whose lifelong actions, both before and during his campaign, stand as anathema to basic human decency.

I continued to struggle as I witnessed the decent Republicans I knew – particularly my family members – excuse Trump’s unconscionable actions while condemning the shortcomings of Hillary Clinton as much more louder and immoral than the sins of Donald J. Trump.  I especially struggled, as a student of political science and communication, when many of my liberal acquaintances continued an “Anyone But Clinton” mantra even after the primary, and used their lay-understandings of politics and elections to school me over why I knew nothing about politics or elections.  In the end, the progressive votes that went to the anything-but-qualified Jill Stein in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan were enough to secure Donald Trump’s historic and unprecedented electoral college victory. 

I am a progressive, but a fairly moderate progressive. I have a conservative Republican upbringing, a college education in political communication and American politics and elections, graduate training in public speaking and logical argument, and wartime service as a member of the U.S. Army. For me, the election of Trump, and the rejection of Clinton by both sides has been a painful injury for too many people who care for equality and justice.  It particularly hurts me at a gutwrenching level.  Why do I hurt so much?  I would not have admitted it while a 20-year old college student, but it is because I truly have always believed that there is such a thing as American exceptionalism. No, I don’t think Americans are more exceptional than Germans, Russians, Koreans, Iranians, or even Antarcticans (sorry, penguins). But I grew up always believing that the U.S.A. was more exceptional than any other nation-state in the world because we offered a way out – a shining city on a hill for others oppressed in their countries by the whims of mad dictators, poverty born from fascistic or communist policies, or restrictions on free speech.  In short, we were a superhero country, there for anyone needing an escape to seek refuge. It is no wonder my pride in America began at age four.

Kindergarten Voter, Elementary Republican, Apathetic Teen

I first caught the bug for politics in Kindergarten, as our class voted in the Bush-Dukakis election of ’88 (I voted for Bush because I didn’t know what a Dukakis was). The bug grew in third grade, where I typically found myself in the Christa McAuliffe Elementary School library in McAllen, TX memorizing every single president, from George Washington up to George H.W. Bush.  I memorized their political parties, and even all the dates of their terms.  As a raised Republican, I abhorred the Democrats, especially the new President Bill Clinton who had the nerve to unseat the first president I ever voted for. I also had a big dislike for the new First Lady who, in the words of my mother, dared to be a horrible woman for only having one child (for somehow it was Hillary’s fault, not Bill’s?).

My passion for elections grew into my middle school years.  Although I was constantly bullied by my peers in both home and church (sometimes by the same people), and as I struggled to find friends and fit in, I still had a sense of pride in my country, particularly when learning about the Civil War and the Alamo.  During the 1996 election, I held my hopes high that Republican Senator Bob Dole would finally get rid of Bill Clinton.  My hopes were dashed, of course.  The bullying continued, the passion for country waned, and before long I saw my life not as one of exceptionalism, but one of constant survival. I attempted suicide three times during these years, out of desperation of a neverending torture that neither my school or parents were willing to help adequately fix.  Once high school began, my priorities of fitting in took precedence over my passion for country.  At times, I would grin seeing things like Bill Clinton’s sex scandal and impeachment, as well as our Democratic Governor Ann Richards finally being defeated – by the son of the first president I ever voted for, no less! (a.k.a Dubya).  When the election of 2000 happened, I harbored small emotions toward my new Governor George W. defeating Vice-President Al Gore. When he did, no thanks to the Supreme Court intervention of the Florida recount, I breathed a sigh of relief – but I was still not as interested as the younger Dan was.

Somewhere in the beginning of college at the University of North Texas, my passion for politics excessively dissipated, replaced by the pain of post-bullying and post-family angst. When I was finally eligible to vote for president for the first time, I instead took the route the majority of my fellow apathetic peers did: I said I wasn’t going to vote because I didn’t like either candidate.  George W. Bush had botched the Iraq War, and John Kerry was a Democrat.  I jumped on board the “flip-flopper bandwagon” in making my excuse for not voting for Kerry because it was easier.  But truth be told: switching party’s is hard, and when it is ingrained in you – anything other than your party brings about a severe sense of betrayal.  I would come to regret this decision years later, once my military service unlocked my sense of pride for my country.

Army Strong and My Political Realignment

I had several reasons for joining the military after college.  The easiest one was economic: I was in debt, unemployed, and going broke fast.  With a BA in Sociology, after 5 ½ years of mostly toiling with mediocre grades and dealing with depression – I had nowhere near the resume or academic excellence to get anything other than a job in sales. But my situation was hardly unique, for I was one of the vast majority of college graduates in the same boat. Many turned to moving back in with their parents.  I couldn’t do that.  

It’s easy to trivialize someone’s angst-ridden child-parent relationship, but mine was a little different.  If my multiple suicide attempts, my 5 ½ years of depression through college, and my losing of my faith was enough of an indicator, I knew that to move back in with my parents would be a death wish.  I could not and would not move back under their roof to live under their rules.  I was still only 23.  At the time, I held deep, traditional beliefs in serving one’s country, and I continued to feel the pride that others felt in the idea of defending the U.S.A. with their life – a feeling likely established in my early days learning about the boys in blue fighting the South to free the slaves.  However, we were at war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, something way different than the Civil War.  I still saw it as my citizen’s duty to join up, though, and I sought out the recruiter, asked to join, and realized later just how big a decision I had made.  I knew that I would likely be in a war zone one day, regardless of my military job as an Army musician.  I called my grandmother on the phone the night I was set to ship out.  She was the only family member I felt I could truly talk to.  She was a snarky grandmother with a disciplined attitude, and an immunity to the ridiculousness that was the Mormon religion her son (my dad) adopted.  Plus, she was a Rust Belt Democrat!  Her comforting words helped me gain the courage to see my military decision out.  I ended up serving 8 years, with a year spent serving in Iraq.  It was during these years when I met my wonderful spouse Ariela, also in the Army, and I found the motivation to resurrect my love of politics and country.

It was also during these years when I voted for the first time – Barack Obama in 2008.  When chided by my parents for it, I searched myself for the reasons why I switched parties, and knew I had made the right decision, particularly since John McCain’s pick for his VP, Sarah Palin, was dangerously unfit to be let anywhere near the Oval Office, let alone White House.  But it wasn’t just this reason – it was because I knew that, contextualized with the hypocrisy of the ideology my parents raised me to believe, that conservative Republicanism was only an ideology that prioritized some Americans over others.  My parents, especially my Korean mother, raised me to believe that I was an American, not a Korean.  I was not taught the Korean language, and I was not raised in Korean custom. However, I was constantly reminded outside of the home just how “un-American” I was.  In 2008, it didn’t matter how my parents or any Republican attempted to rationalize conservative Republicanism.  When the message by the overall Republican base permeated with a Gentleman’s Agreement that non-white males and white males were practically “separate, but equal,” I knew better than to continue participating.  In fact, I chose to make my participation stronger – but for the other side.  I couldn’t very well do that with an Army uniform on, and I saw my military time as a sense of citizen service, not a career.  It was time to move on.

Just a Couple of Veterans Going to School

Ariela and I both finished our active duty obligations to the Army and moved to Iowa to attend the University of Northern Iowa (UNI).  There, I began Round 2 of college, beginning my studies in political communication and public administration.  I loved it!  Not only I gained further understanding of how our American politics work on paper, but also in action.  Additionally, I graduated Summa Cum Laude!

I was also privileged to be in Iowa during the 2012 presidential election season, where I campaigned vigorously both for my state senator and the Planned Parenthood affiliate in Des Moines, as well as helping various progressive causes.  I also gained experience in Iowa politics - two different internships, one fellowship, and a field organizing position in a congressional primary campaign.   It was a privilege to learn how our elections work not only from an academic perspective, but more importantly an in-person, grassroots perspective.

As a student at UNI, I also participated in different progressive student group activities.  However, it was when I formed the first student reproductive rights group at the university where my political action muscles really had to be flexed.  This was a big step on my part, but when I learned that UNI had a pro-life group but no pro-choice group, I made the decision to take action and start the group from scratch.  My fellow members and I coined the name UNI STARR (Students Together for the Advancement of Reproductive Rights).  I’m so touched that, to this day, STARR still exists and is continuing its efforts to educate students about reproductive rights.

Toward the end of my time at UNI, I heard the call of the Master’s degree and I felt I had to answer.  I chose to attend the University of Kansas to finalize my understanding of political communication.  We moved to Lawrence, where I wrote my Master’s thesis on Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper and how language in the film resulted in two highly polarized responses from liberal and conservative audiences.  I also busied myself as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, where I taught four successful semesters of public speaking.  I made sure in my curriculum that I showed my undergraduate students the importance of political participation and how to detect logical fallacies in the arguments we hear from others in our citizenry.  In short, I did everything in my power to help make smarter citizens.

I put my hopeful doctoral studies on pause so Ariela could attend graduate school in New York (The New School of Social Research).  But I admittedly have felt yet again the wane of my field’s importance now that Trump and his brand of communication is seen as “the new normal.” But it was before November 8th, during my interactions with angry liberal and misguided conservatives in the Facebook crucible where I first began to second guess my education goals.  Of course, the challenge for someone like me – someone educated in politics – is the patience (or lack thereof) it takes when the lay public denigrates your expertise because, in our American democracy, everyone’s an “expert.” The toxic stew which we call the 2016 presidential election, however, was my tipping point, and Facebook became the crucible that took hold and imprisoned both my pride for having any political expertise, as well as my optimism for rational discourse.  In short, the 2016 election toxicity made me lose hope in continuing as a scholar in politics and communication.

The Facebook Crucible: Where Reason Goes to Die

The most memorable Facebook disagreements I had were with what I refer to as “ABC voters” (“Anyone But Clinton”).  If I want to explain the toxicity of political rational discourse from my 2016 experience with ABC voters, there are plenty of examples to choose from.  For purposes of shortening it down, I’ll pick the most memorable two ABC voters: 1) Melvin - a French Horn player in the Army Band who knows more about me than elections, logical fallacies, and morality; and 2) Brendon - my brother-in-law, a Mormon from Utah who also knows more about logical fallacies and morality than me because he doesn’t get his news from the liberal media. 

Melvin is a radical, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  He purportedly cares for all humans, regardless of nationality – a “radical” view I feel we should all have but sadly don’t.  But when it came to 2016 presidential politics, Melvin was/is a single-issue voter.  For someone like me, this seems so stupid, as the presidency is never about a single issue.  However, too many voters rely on a single issue in finally making their decision.  In the case of the 2016 election, however, Melvin’s single issue wasn’t abortion, or the environment, or national security, or the economy, or even foreign relations.  It was Hillary Clinton.

Melvin first Facebook-challenged me when I had posted a status update about the toxicity of the “Bernie Bros” telling women they didn’t know what was good for them when they supported Hillary Clinton.  During the Primary season, Melvin’s key argument was that Clinton was a corrupt monster with lifelong ties of regime change in other countries, something he absolutely abhorred. His intentions behind his argument reeked of utopianism - the unrealistic values of a dreamer who thinks morality shouldn’t be a complicated issue.  In this case, the complicated issue is deciding international policy within the paradigm of the security dilemma (whatever decision we make needs to keep us safe, while balancing relations with others and bluffing adversaries at times).  His view is that it shouldn’t be complicated to value all human life, but this gives such short shrift to the reality of the international security dilemma.  He didn’t understand the complicated nature of such an issue to make a fully-informed viewpoint on the matter, but he disguised this non-understanding with absolute confidence and “know-it-all” condescension.  For Hillary, whatever her husband Bill did that harmed civilian lives in other countries, as well as what she may have advocated for as Secretary of State, was enough for Melvin to put his hopes in Bernie Sanders - who knew nothing about foreign policy or hard decisions, and later Jill Stein - who simply knew nothing.

Melvin’s primary argumentation device against me was the use of what I call the Fallacy Card.  This is where you use the definitions of specific fallacies to conveniently fit your opponent’s argument within that definition in order to make it seem invalid.  In other words, he molded anything I said into the Wikipedia definition of a flawed argument - and boy did he keep at it.  His Fallacy Card playing reeked of the common Strawman fallacy where you unfairly compare two sides in order to strengthen the side you’re on.  In his case, he used it to accuse others of making Straw fallacies – the fallacy of crying fallacy!  Every time I made an argument, I could predict the steps of his Fallacy Card response: 1) cry fallacy; 2) post a Wikipedia definition of the fallacy I committed; 3) victory.  For example, I argued that he was throwing his vote away in a regressive display of ignorance by voting Jill Stein.  His fallacy card: I committed the False Dichotomy fallacy (where you falsely claim there are only two solutions to a problem when there are actually more options).  In this case, he accused me of saying there are only two options for president when Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were clearly in existence, and then posts the definition of False Dichotomy from Wikipedia while claiming the high ground of argumentative superiority. Of course, I didn’t commit such a fallacy because the reality of PROBABILITY was on my argument’s side.  In other words, the amount of support (and qualifications) for both Gary Johnson and Jill Stein was infinitesimally impossible to realistically succeed, making any progressive vote that went to Stein simply a futile effort to deny the realistic progressive candidate (and progressivism across America) a victory through indirectly and regressively electing Trump and conservatism.  Of course, Melvin refused to accept this, telling me I had no perception of reality.  Quite the easy response to anything, of course.

My fear from these stupendously baffling exchanges with Melvin was that it his sheer ignorance represented a sizable number of progressive voters.  If this were true, it truly did give relevance to the old saying that “Progressives Fall In Love, Conservatives Fall In Line.”  My hopes for rational discourse and the success of progressivism dissipated further.  

It took me a short while, after closing my Facebook account, to reflect on the matter.  After much thought - too much thought - I’ve gained a little of my optimism back.  For starters, I had to reason with myself that just because Melvin was truly representative of the toxic ABC voter that seems to define our negative worldview of rational voters DOESN’T mean he is representative of a majority of progressive voters.  In fact, he’s NOT a progressive voter.  Witnessing firsthand the power behind people coming out of the woodworks to do as much as possible to fight Trump’s America, I realized that Melvin only represents a “couch activist”; in his case, a Facebook troller and political ranter that wears an Army uniform (something he has admitted he knows he is NOT allowed to do).  But when a guy says he’s unwilling to give up his comfortable military paycheck for playing military music, and when a guy uses his family as his reason for giving participating only at the bare minimum (while others with families proudly do WAY more), I know he’s truly not a progressive.  In short, a Green Party couch activist should be given the amount of respect we give conservative Republicans by not pursuing their vote.  Progressives shouldn’t be factoring these kinds of voters in our progressive coalition.  We need to move on - we need to find fighters.

Unlike the radical non-progressive that is Melvin, my brother-in-law Brendon is a different take.  As a Mormon from Utah, he is – you guessed it – a conservative Republican.  My frustration with him started when I read his Facebook post prior to Election Week: he and my sister Christina would be voting for Trump.  Before I continue, some context is required.

I’m the eldest of five children, and the only one who has publicly and officially resigned from the Mormon church (and apparently conservative Republicanism).  Christina, the youngest of the five, was always a pragmatic and down-to-earth dude-ette.  However, she had her own crisis of conscience her first semester in college at BYU (Mormon University).  She called me on the night I was set to deploy to Iraq, pleading for help.  She said she felt absolutely alone, trapped in a Mormon college where the average freshman girl had a ring on her finger and a baby on the way.  Worse, all of Christina’s real friends from high school were at the University of Texas in Austin (UT).

Knowing full well that my dad had a deeply-held prejudice against UT that came from witnessing a group of drunken football fans acting drunk (in his view, they were EXCEPTIONALLY drunk and, hence, UT was exceptionally wicked), it disturbed me that Christina’s dreams were being held hostage my parents’ ultimatum that if she dropped out of BYU and went to UT that she’d be cut off financially.  My parents were not only using their inexplicable animus toward UT in this ultimatum – but they were also trying to prevent what they likely saw as their youngest child following in the footsteps of their eldest – the path to apostasy (cue chilling wind-blowing sounds).  Christina had every right to feel scared and helpless.  My help in our phone conversation was limited given my predicament (packing for deployment to Iraq).  However, every time I think about that conversation, the memory haunts me, especially given what happened afterward.  Christina ended up capitulating to my parents' ultimatum and staying at BYU.  There, she met Brendon and rededicated herself to Mormonism.  At her wedding reception, I had to listen to Brendon brag about Christina’s UT crisis.  While he reminisced on her “close call,” and all the good little Mormons laughed along - including Christina, I had to bite my lip and look at the floor.  End of context.

One week to election day, I read Christina’s regurgitated arguments about Hillary Clinton being the next Richard Nixon. She exuded a “husband knows best” attitude that Brendon arguably inspired.  When I challenged her, she shied away by saying that checks and balances will probably save the day, and Congress will prevent Trump from running amuck with the Oval Office.  She and Brendon also accused me of being a product of the liberal media, an accusation another of my sisters (who also attended BYU) threw my way once upon a time - in particular CNN.  For the record, I never watch CNN because it’s for-profit priorities and media sensationalism are downright horrible.  But what is it that BYU students have against CNN?  Do all professors warn the Mormon college kids that CNN is the Devil?  It's just freakin’ weird!

Brendon deployed his own Fallacy Card at me - and it was a doozy.  In this case, he accused me of using Donald Trump as a distraction from the real problem – Hillary Clinton.  In other words, a Red Herring fallacy: he thought that my “Trump-is-the-Real-Problem” argument was really a decoy from the TRUE menace that was Hillary.  Of course, this really revealed more about Brendon and Christina than it did my alleged lack of reason and fallacious argumentation.  Why?  When Donald Trump brags about sexual assault, cheating employees out of pay, or how he takes advantage of our tax system for his own businesses, Brendon gives it a pass and calls it explainable - but this is because it is palatable given their morals (if you could call it moral) and values: capitalism, deservedness through zero-sum competition, patriarchy, and a societal disciplinarianism.  What is not palatable is when Hillary’s husband makes backdoor deals for pardons, or when her campaign manager’s emails show how he dares to strategize political communication, or when the DNC leaders are revealed to be trying to sway the election in Hillary’s direction.  Regardless, Hillary Rodham Clinton is GUILTY to Brendon and Christina (guilty by association), and hence UNFORGIVEN and UNVOTABLE.  In the meantime,  Donald Trump will not be mentioned (and if I mention him, I’m obviously partisan and distracting from the real problem?)

That very night, I tossed and turned in bed, wondering how it was possible that Christina, my down-to-earth sister, could mentally inoculate all of Trump’s transgressions and corruption in order to justify her’s and Brendon’s anti-Hillary position.  I had to accept the fact that she was no longer down-to-Earth, but down-to-whatever-Mormon-planet-she-hopes-to-live-on-in-the-afterlife-with-Brendon (this is a real Mormon thing, by the way). I also had to tell myself that her continual arguments that everything would be okay because Congress would stop Trump were only her justifications in the moment to vote for him.  As we’ve seen in Trump’s first two weeks, Congress can do nothing about executive orders, while we the People wait nervously, worried just what new executive order Trump has up his sleeve.  Today - while Trump continues using his immense power that Congress is powerless to check, I read that his firing of Sally Yates as acting Attorney General is resurrecting comparisons to Richard Nixon.  Of course, I will not throw this in Christina and Brendon's faces, because it would be an exercise of futility.  Like Melvin, they are unreachable - at least when through the Facebook crucible.

In short, I seem to have thought that Christina was within the realm of reasonable voters.  However, she is clearly not when her own values and priorities highlight Clintonian corruption while excusing - or filtering out completely - Trumpian corruption that, on paper, has been proven as WAY more numerous and problematic.  But the other side values Trumpian corruption as a moral necessity, and Christina has chosen this side.  In essence, I have to remind myself that our fight for American decency is against those who align with the opposite.  I cannot anymore worry about this other side, but instead about knowing who is on our side and how we can mobilize them to join the fight for decency.

The Burial of Decency, and It’s Hopeful Resurrection

We are now at a crossroads in American History, as now-President Trump has issued an unprecedented amount of extreme executive orders within just the first week, let alone first day, of his presidency – all of which victimize incredibly large numbers of people: women around the world who rely on abortion-supporting non-governmental organizations; refugees fighting for survival from their war-torn countries; millions of Americans now with affordable healthcare poised to lose it due to ideological preferences for free-market priorities.  We now have nepotism in the White House with Trump’s son-in-law serving as an advisor. We now have proven anti-semitism in the White House and National Security meetings with Breitbart extremist Steve Bannon, Trump’s most trusted advisor.  We also have a President who has faked the divesting of his office from his businesses, now proven with documentary evidence that he is still making money and, hence, using the Office of the Presidency as a personal profit mechanism.

What hurts me and many progressives even more is that the entire legitimacy of the United States of America as the beacon of hope for millions of people in the world, the exceptionalism I grew up to view in America, has now been lost.  It has now been recast as the kingdom of a spoiled madman tarnishing its image of legitimacy on a daily and even hourly basis with the most petty and childish Tweets and public displays of unmeasured, unpresidential language, let alone corrupt actions meant to bolster his brand and his profits.  Our legacy as a country that led the way for the world with its steady leadership now shares commonalities with countries that have fallen in stature due to the whims and actions of mad dictators carrying a big gun in one hand and a solid gold rattle in the other.  And our voters chose this.  Our families chose this.  My family chose this.  They had the information, and yet chose Trump.  It really happened.

Liberals chose this as well.  The flawed action/inaction of ABC voters and single-issue curator voters of the liberal wing have wasted OUR (not their) efforts for progress toward the quixotic Jill Stein and have allowed for the Republican Party and their anointed Demagogue-in-Chief to take over.  On November 9th, plenty of these “voters” chided their scared friends that everything was going to be okay.  Today, they are now eating crow.  Of course, it was obvious to me why Jill Stein launched an even more quixotic campaign than her presidency in her failed recount of the three states where her margins of the vote, if they had gone to Hillary, would have prevented a President Trump.  But now he’s our president, and those who say “Not My President,” really mean “he IS my president, and it’s a travesty.”  This new president has already single-handedly undone all President Obama’s efforts to repair our reputation on the international stage, recasting it now as an America of an unapologetic authoritarian bent on absolute power and greed disguised as “America First.”  The word “presidential” is now a substitute for weakness, decency is something that can be politicized, and lies in the name of Trump are “alternative facts.”

Instead of social media obsessions and distractions, I have proudly marched in the Women’s March, I pay dues and volunteer for local progressive causes in my area, and I spend 8 hours a day working for Planned Parenthood.  Although I have been fighting tooth and nail for progressive causes here in New York – doing my part when I feel my country needs it more than ever – my internal fight over what to do with my ties to my now Trump-allied family members has been exceedingly tough. Friends and families are always naturally divided every election season. But this election season and its outcome is not politics-as-usual. Given the circumstances, how does one interact with friends and family when they participated to help make America totalitarian while dismissing the very existence of others different from them as spilled milk?  I’m reminded of the many who fled Germany in the wake of the Nazi takeover.  The story of the old movie director Douglas Sirk is the first to come to mind.

While a German national, Douglas Sirk painfully watched his country adopt Nazi totalitarianism.  His ex-wife and son swallowed the Nazi Kool-Aid to make Germany great again.  Sirk had a choice in remaining loyal to his family and his country, or turning his back, knowing full well what the outcome of such political direction would be.   He turned his back.  He was faced with the difficult decision of doing the right thing, when family loyalty happened to be on the opposite end.  Sirk never saw his son again – the boy was killed in action wearing a Nazi uniform in 1944.

History and reason tell us that the direction of Trump’s executive action and totalitarianism only goes one way.  Things are going to become worse.  It is now where I ask myself if it’s possible that Americans may have to turn their backs on their families and home country.  I wish I could ask Douglas Sirk how it felt.  However, unlike Sirk, my ties to my parents have already been more troubled than the average person.  Their allegiance to Trump was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  If I’m going to continue my fight to undo the terror diminishing our country like other countries have experienced, I have no room for those that vote for madmen while claiming the moral high ground - family or not.  I have nothing more to say to them, so nothing will be said.  As for siblings – the same goes for them. In the wake of the Trump election and the outbreak of hate crimes against minorities in the name of Trump, Brendon tried to convince me it WASN’T really happening, and that liberal-on-Trump supporter violence was the REAL problem.  Needless to say, I have nothing more to say to such a person.  When our family members ally with the inexplicable and participate in dehumanizing human beings, the responsibility is not to tolerate them but to quit them.

I embrace the irony that I am not the young boy my parents raised to hate the Clintons.  Instead, I embrace having voted for president the very woman I attacked in the 4th grade for having only one child.  I embrace the fact that although I once shared my parents dislike for our Texas Gov. Ann Richards and her liberal politics, I now sit rooms away from her daughter Cecile as we continue fighting to defend a woman’s right to proper healthcare.  As a former Republican, Veteran, and now progressive crusader for what’s right, I will continue to fight as long as I breathe.  While the Melvins of the world (not the Seattle kind, haha) continue their political action through Facebook trolling and quixotic votes meant to aggrandize the size of their morality, and the Brendons continue wearing their “See-No-Liberal-Media” blindfolds and “Hear-No-Liberal-Media” earplugs, I can only look away from such foolishness and focus on what can be achieved, rational discourse with those truly open to such an idea.  I should not give up on my pursuit of reason in politics simply b/c those with imaginary expertise delegitimize my field with a Facebook post or tweet. The work must continue!  And if the time comes where the fight is lost, the experiences of the very Syrian refugees whom our new president has now victimized on a massive scale will be felt by all Americans. The time to leave America and turn our backs on friends and family may become a tragic possibility, one I hope never becomes a reality.

In the meantime, I fight to prevent such a reality.