I guess I'm outing myself politically.

I'm a very conservative person in many ways, but I'm not a Christian Fundamentalist (way far from that, really). If the Republican party did not back big business over the good of the country AND bear the worst of Christian Fundamentalist scaremongering like a battle flag, I'd probably be a Republican. I'm for the death penalty, for specific crimes, though I want reforms in our justice system to help ensure we don't kill innocents. That, alone, should get me kicked out of the Democratic party. I like guns, I use them, I'd carry one if my job required it, and I think that teaching kids about guns PROPERLY is how to avoid accidental deaths. Outlawing them doesn't work, that's when you get kids finding them and killing each other by mistake. I am fond of upholding our country's constitution, all of it.

That makes me a Libertarian, sort of, but I strongly dislike them as well. I have plenty of views that really ought to keep me out of the Democratic party, but there are still conservatives there, too (my grandmother is one of them - she's an old-school Dem, and I think, so am I), which means I at least have some company in my unpopular views. I'm pro-choice for others, but I personally will not have an abortion (for reasons that are personal - and that's how it should be, PERSONAL), and as with guns, I believe education about sexuality is the key to resolving the unwanted pregnancy and STD problem. I believe that recycling can work if it's actually encouraged (on a corporate level - that's where it breaks down), I want a sustainable economy, and I eat meat and wear leather (use the whole damn animal). I'm for letting people live their lives unmolested by 'bedroom laws' that will destroy the lives of good people that I know - gay people make perfectly decent parents, as do poly people.

Maybe I'm a moderate. Perhaps one side balances the other.

In another person's journal someone stated that they have never heard of Republicans wanting to leave if a Democrat wins. The reason you have not heard any republicans express a desire to move away is that a democrat in power doesn't ever mean that their rights may be taken away. Many people who are not deeply ensconced in the Religious Right are terrified that the basic principle of religious freedom is going to be eroded even further that it already has been (I could care less about prayer in schools, honestly, as long as everyone was allowed to do so in their own way - it's things like creationism superseding evolution in PUBLIC SCHOOLS that scare me). Women's rights are almost guaranteed to backslide in the next four years. Gay rights are already almost worse than they were ten years ago. Our President has practically promised that he will do all he can to do these things. How can institutionalized intolerance be good for our country and its people?

That is what frightens me - the threat of a theocracy in which I'd be a non-person. If it was a question of democrat vs republican as it was in the 1970's I'd be far less concerned.

I know plenty of intelligent, compassionate people who are not Fundies who are Republicans, and while I have to admire your loyalty to the other values, I also have to wonder why you turn a blind eye to what I find so frightening about the party as it stands today. I can't get my head around it. Maybe it's time for your party to re-evaluate its priorities?