Just a lifelong Texas Democrat's thoughts on "converting" fundies [View All]

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

I've read a lot over the past week about how we need to reach out to fundamentalists and evangelicals and re-frame things and convince them ours is the way.

I've grown up around these people. I live next door to them, my kid goes to school with their kids, I've gone to church with them (back when I attended), I work with them, I'm related by marriage to some of them.

I've talked to them and LISTENED to them for four years now, actively talking about social and political issues. I've been respectful, I've not ever raised my voice in these discussions, I totally respect their point of view and the fact that they feel deeply about these issues. When they asked for information, I readily gave it. I created charts comparing Kerry and bush's views and positions on different issues, using each candidate's web site, so as to be fair. They pretty much dismissed them. I've talked myself blue in the face. I've exercised more patience than I ever thought I had. I've bitten my tongue so much, I'm surprised I still have one.

Guess how many I won over? Not a single one.

And it's not for a lack of persuasion. I've been told I could sell a ketchup popsicle to an Eskimo. I feel passionately and deeply about the values and ideals of the Democratic party. I am at my very core an American, believing in all the precious freedoms we have. I am also a Christian who believes a lot of other Christians have forgotten (or maybe never knew?) what Christianity is really supposed to be about. I don't say that last thing to them, I just listen and talk.

It didn't do a damn bit of good. Not a damn bit. Now I may have softened up one or two here or there on a few issues. I know I did have one of them convinced that gays need equal rights, but months later, I have come to find out her husband and her church have talked her right back into her previous, hateful position. Convinced her I am just crazy and going to hell and a "gay lover." She is also convinced my daughter isn't going to turn out well because her parents think gays should have "special rights" (that one drives me crazy--there's nothing special about equal rights).

I tried to focus on economic issues, I broke it down in simple terms, they didn't want to hear it. Some changed the subject, some laughed and claimed not to understand "money stuff." I talked about health care, I gave concrete examples of how our current state of things hurts us. How it actually costs the taxpayers MORE when we kick kids off programs such as CHIPS, health insurance for low-income working parents (Texas, under the republicans, has kicked a quarter of a million kids off that very good, very cost effective plan).

It DIDN'T. MATTER.

Now I'm not trying to discourage anyone. If this election has given you renewed energy to go out there and start talking to fundies, don't let me stop you. Have at it. Attend their churches if you want, go to their houses for dinner. Please remember they are trying to convert you, too. So it's a tug of war no one seems to win.

I never was the first to bring up gay marriage, or abortion or guns or school prayer, by the way. THEY WERE. Usually the fundie guys brought up those subjects, really belligerently, and looked at me like I was trying to eat their first born child. So, I'd gather up my energy and talk about THOSE issues if they wanted to talk about them. But I could see it was a huge wasted effort. Their eyes glazed over as soon as I started to speak. My husband told me more than once "damn, they have to be hard core not to be persuaded by you. You could talk paint into coming off the wall."

To no avail. So I hope the Democratic party will excuse me if I bow out of this effort to reach out to the fundies. Been there, done that. It exhausted me beyond description and accomplished exactly nothing. Please those in bluer areas (I understand it isn't kosher to say blue states or red states anymore), please know your blue brethren in the redder areas...many of us worked our asses off. If anyone can talk to these people, we can. I don't "look" liberal (whatever that means), I fit right in. They consider me one of them, just the resident weirdo liberal. They used to like to think of me as the entertainment (one of them confessed that to me just before the election--that parties would have been boring without "messin with the kook!"). No more.

Sorry.