Born This Way

I guess it was around the onset of puberty that I first realized I was different. Thinking back though, I realize that I was like that as far back as I can remember, it’s just that I didn’t realize then that it was what other people would consider abnormal. I wasn’t like my friends; didn’t really have the same way of thinking, different thoughts, different interests, different desires. I hid the way I was through high school, it was a different time back in the 70’s, it wasn’t really accepted back then, I mean even more unaccepted than it is now. Finally, in my second year of college, I just couldn’t pretend anymore, and I came out.

It wasn’t anything like an official declaration, but I began to make it clear to my friends and my family, my professors at college, even my boss at work, that I was different. Unlike most of the kids my age, I liked my parents. I loved my country. I thought God was alive. I didn’t agree that capitalism was inherently evil. I didn’t believe the alarmists that told us we would run out of oil in ten years, that over population would destroy the earth, or that man made climate change was bringing on a world-wide ice age. I believed life was sacred, and began at conception. Yes, I finally admitted the truth to myself and all I knew, I was out of the closet; I was a conservative.

That was the early seventies. You know, hippies, beads, and flowers in their hair… and George McGovern! Even the Republicans were progressives! Conservative bigotry, especially on campus, was even worse than what we have today. We’ve made some progress in the intervening years, we even managed to get a conservative president elected, but political prejudice is still rampant among the many haters in this country. They still look at us like we have a disease, like we must be idiots to choose this persuasion. Ah, as if it is a choice! Who would choose to be so ostracized? Who would choose to be considered so uncool? Who would choose to be treated as sub-human, pariahs, greedy bastards who want poor people to suffer, be sick, and die? Who would choose to be called the destroyers of the environment, enemy of the working man, purveyors of the war on women? A choice? Hell no, I was born this way!

Now I’m no scientist, but I do have strong opinions and an internet connection, and that’s pretty much the same as having stayed in a Holiday Inn last night. So having perused a few junk science articles about the “conservative gene”, I feel perfectly qualified to declare without reservation that the science is settled: Conservatism is something you are born with, always, and is perfectly natural and normal. Human psychology isn’t really that complicated… google it, you’ll see! Even in nature, elements of conservatism are to be found. Some chimpanzees exhibit personality traits applicable to conservatism, many animals actually don’t kill their unborn children, certain trees lean right. Always it seems, conservatism is the result of nature, not nurture. Oh yes, I had that aunt who exposed me to John Wayne movies when I was young (conservative pornography), but doubtless she sensed my conservative genetics before she attempted to corrupt me. No, despite what the deniers will tell you, I was born like this. Truth is whatever I say it is.

Dare I say that this may be the next civil rights movement. No, not even in sarcasm… but oh, for the day when we will add to the long list of protected subsets of our population the most misunderstood of them all, the politically different, the constitutionalists, the libertarians, the conservatives. Oh, for the day when we will not have to endure the hurtful invective of the hate-filled and the ignorant: “Tea-baggers!”, “Nut jobs!”, “Whacko-birds!”. If we are born this way, how can anyone deny us the same rights as everyone else to pursue our happiness? I know you will say that we have the same rights granted to all by the constitution, but I’m talking about new rights, like the right to have Starbucks cater my Tea-Party wedding, the right to have my blog appear on The Huffington Post, the right to serve on the board of Planned Parenthood, and the right to have Sean Penn and George Clooney star in my upcoming Christian film called “Are You Saved?” …I mean if I can afford their salaries, why should they be able to refuse me? I was born this way.

We need awareness campaigns to fight the bigotry. How many of us have experienced the shunning of FaceBook defriending when we are outed? How many have suffered the disdain of privileged liberal professors in our college years, and the ridicule of our politically comfortable progressive family and associates? The hatred and ignorance runs even to the highest levels of political power, with President Obama using the “T-word” to describe us and decrying the motives of “Christians”, which of course is code for “conservative Christians”, who, of course, were born that way.

IMHO: Maybe there is a conservative gene. I doubt it, but I don’t know. Never trust anyone without the humility to admit that there is much they do not know. I have to believe that even with genetic dispositions we are not slaves to our DNA. First of all freedoms is a free will, and if the tyrants can conquer that, the other freedoms do not matter. Most wickedness is in our genes, but we are more than animals, our morality regularly holds at bay our genetics. If there is a conservative gene, I of course would see it as a good one to have, like good hair or nice blue eyes, and pity the fool who has the recessive progressive one. I’m sure though that it’s all far more complex than just declaring that the science is settled. We would do well to respect each other’s rights to their beliefs, even when we believe those beliefs are wrong. That is free will. Even God allows us free will, who are we then to force our beliefs on others? In the America I love, we live and let live. Everyone will not agree with us on everything, we unite on what we hold in common, we force no man to beliefs he finds abhorrent. America believes in Freedom. We were born this way.