Story and a Q: friends with different political beliefs?

[Deleted]

Do many (or any) of your friends have radically different political beliefs than you? If so, how close of friends are you, and how do you manage the friendship?

Here's the story that inspired this question. My husband taught in a middle school from 2010-2011. We loosely kept in touch with one person from that school, Mary. They team taught quite a bit, and she was the only friend he made in that school. In the time since then he has used her as a personal reference, and we are both facebook friends with her.

From my interactions with her in person, my impression of Mary is that she is very soft spoken, radiates kindness, and is a wonderful teacher. Her blog posts link to her facebook profile, and I have now seen her blog about many personal things that she never discussed at school (no judgement there; that's the point of a blog).

Here's where it gets problematic for me. She is very religious, and she and her husband have three children through IVF. When they were attempting to conceive their third child, they applied for some sort of scholarship through a charity. They did not receive the money, and Mary posted the first names in her blog of the five couples who won the money. Two were homosexual couples, and she dedicated a blog post to how she and her husband were more "deserving" than couples who have "chosen" to be childfree by going against God's will. This blog post sickened me, but I didn't say anything to her because this is such a sensitive subject and I didn't want to put my husband in an awkward situation by arguing with his friend (FWIW, he was also disgusted at her posting this).

This week she posted about the Duggars (of course), and how she's sure that God has forgiven Josh Duggar, and how no one should be judged by their teenage "mistakes." Again, I am sickened by her post.

I know the answer is simple here: I'll unfriend her. We have since moved out of her state and will never see her again, and my husband doesn't need her for a reference. She is also revealing herself to be someone who I have no interest in interacting with in any way. However, it occurred to me that literally none of my friends have opposing political beliefs from my own. I'm sure that shared beliefs is a big part of what makes people friends,  but it got me thinking about how friendships could be maintained between people who have such radically different beliefs.

[shopgirl07]

I think there's opposing political beliefs and then there's just being a plain old bigoted asshole. You don't need to feel bad about not being friends with the latter.

[zelda25]

I think there's a really huge chasm between "different political beliefs" vs. bigotry. You've described a pretty clear-cut case of the latter, and I can't see wanting to preserve a friendship under those circumstances.

[cajunmom]

The husbands of two close friends are very outspoken conservatives. They fancy themselves knowledgable about all things, they are haters of anyone on welfare, etc. During Obama's first presidential campaign, they would post various smear articles on FB, all sorts of birther stuff, you know what I'm talking about. I (mostly) kept from responding directly to them but occasionally couldn't help myself. One of the husbands unfriended me, the other one got so mad about something I posted that he threw his laptop and broke it (so his wife told me) and then unfriended me. I thought it was hilariously immature. Anyway, we've all moved past that. We're all still friends but no politics are spoken about.

I have another former friend who's uber religious. She also posts stuff against gays and she, too, has posted stuff supporting the Duggars. She posted "It's refreshing to see someone admitting to their mistakes instead of trying to hide them." and I was all WTF?? Anyway, I've since unfriended her.

[ddi741]

I think there is more there then just beliefs. She considers molestation a 'mistake' that can be forgiven. That to me is different then disagreeing in other areas.

One of my closest friends and I don't see eye to eye on many political things, we just don't talk about it and respect that we each have our own opinion and agree to disagree.

[Deleted]

It was just so bizarre to see sweet, soft spoken Mary post these blog posts. My reaction was like, "whoah, whoah, woah...whaaaaaat?!?!?!"

I mean I would have guessed she's more conservative than we are, but I didn't see these posts coming. She doesn't even post the memes. Still, time to unfriend!!

[WOT?*]

I think I'm just going to start spouting:

Forgiveness is Divine
Punishment is for man to decide.
And that is why we have a criminal justice system.

Jim Bob is not Divine and it is not his place to forgive.

Jim Bob is neither Judge nor Jury, and it is not his place to punish.

Josh has not been judged by those with the authority to do so.

His victims have not received justice by those with the power to render it.

Maybe those whackadoodles might get the message if it's couched in more biblical terminology.

[drloretta]

I had a close friend who is a very conservative Republican, but barely religious. He is also extremely knowledgeable about politics and can talk very intelligently on the subject. I am unaffiliated, hate politics, and am more religious than him. He would occasionally try to debate me or toss out a zinger here and there, but he knew it was too boring to debate with me. We had a mutual friend who was a very left-leaning liberal, and he would occasionally draw her into debate. It was actually entertaining to watch. Considering he never said anything bigoted or completely out there, I had no issue being friends with him.

With each election cycle I see who's gone off the deep end politically on my FB feed. If I want to keep them on as friends, I just block their feed and live in blissful ignorance

[ESF]

Different political beliefs: whether the ACA is a good law, whether higher education budgets should be cut so that income taxes can be lowered, what to do about ISIS

That is not what these are. Forgiving people for harboring a pedophile and forcing small children to live with their abuser is not a political belief to be tolerated. She's gross. Defriend.

[Deleted]

This isn't much of an issue anymore, but when I was married it was. Many of XH's friends and family were conservative. This mostly came out through comments about Obama and/or mildly racist/ignorant comments about certain things. I think the majority of people I came into contact with were at least tolerant of homosexuality and didn't say much about things like abortion in my presence.

I usually just ignored them or changed the subject. If someone said something really out of line I might have pointed it out, but that happened rarely. I mostly just tried to avoid conflict. My XH was actually a republican (but socially more liberal) and we just didn't talk about politics. It wasn't ideal, but it was doable.

Now, I really don't have any friends with vastly opposing beliefs. I have hidden pretty much everyone on FB who posts things that irritate me or that appear to be racist. I want to look at Facebook for fun and keeping in touch, not to get worked up and upset. I live in a liberal area and work in higher ed so I pretty much assume most of the people I cross paths with are liberal like me.

[imojoebunny]

I have lots of friends who do not agree with me on abortion and gay marriage. I am very clear in my beliefs about it, and we just don't discuss it, well, sometimes, but in a respectful manner. We also don't agree on the school our kids schools go to, the neighborhood we live in, the type of food that is best to eat, and many other things.

I draw the line at being disrespectful. I find a lot of "open minded" people are some of the most closed minded people I know. I learn from having many different types of friends. I feel like most people have good points and bad points, I would not want to be judged on one point, and have the sixty seven other good points overlooked. I also feel like a lot more progress is made by having friends who have a variety of choices. It is much harder for a person to oppose gay marriage, if they meet a family visiting my home who is married with two people of the same sex, two beautiful, well behaved children, and one of the men enjoys football, and the other likes discussing education and makes great cream puffs. A lot of people are afraid of what they don't know.

[Deleted]

I am not sure I could be more liberal when it comes to social issues and I have lived in KS my whole life, so yes, many friends and family with different beliefs.

I mostly don't talk about it. My closest friends have beliefs similar to mine for the most part.

[VillainV]

Yes, I have a lot of friends who are VERY conservative republicans (though my closest friends have very similar beliefs to my own). None of them are racists/bigots though (or if they are they don't share those beliefs).

Once my ultra-conservative friend posted something incredibly offensive about Muslims and his other conservative friends called him out on it before I got a chance to. He apologized.

[yentl]

First of all, you just described my in laws, so those are relationships I can't erase or unfriend. I will tell you, I stopped most FB activity a couple months ago. I actively avoid FB, and it has really improved things in that I'm not constantly confronted with people's BS. There's a saying floating around about how FB makes you dislike people you know? Yeah, I can relate to that. The only problem is I have relied on it for birthday reminders, so I gotta figure out an alternative for that.

But before I avoided FB, I just didn't engage online. I engage respectfully face to face when the situation calls for it. That's how I manage, and it's served me well thus far.

[Deleted]

The thing is, I have a generally great list of friends on fb. It's about 100 people who I actually care about and want to be in contact with. No one I'm friends with posts the crazy offensive memes people often repost here and on the CEP board.

This Mary situation took me by surprise; I wasn't too surprised that she's politically conservative and we're not, but the IVF post and the Duggar post really seemed unusual even for her. Most of her blog and fb posts are just typical mommy things, like soccer games. For someone who just seems so kind in person, seeing this other side of her was shocking and disappointing. Anyway, I unfriended her last night.

[Emerald1486]

I have friends who have differing political beliefs than I do. We do not discuss politics. However, my friends and I do agree on certain key points (I think you have to in order to remain friends).

As far as Mary goes, yea that would be an unfriending. I cannot be friends with someone who believes that is ok