It has to be said...

I spend a lot of time on social media. Not the average amount in my estimation. If anything I am an over-user. Specifically on Facebook. I like to troll, scroll, learn, ask and explore. At least I did. Until the beginning of the primaries.

I like to see myself as a very non-judgmental, inclusive, open-minded person. I do not tend to use social media as a platform for my personal agenda...I share pictures of my dog, my partner, and I ask innocuous questions designed to create conversation and connect the unexpecting. Recently however, the tides have turned and I am finding myself fighting the desire to throw my hands up in the air, delete my account or at least most of the people on it, and commit to only watching Netflix until I flee the country after the election next November.

Sound dramatic? Perhaps you are right. However...

I have a number of friends who seem to be Trump supporters. I mean....life long friends. And family. MY FAMILY. I come from the most racially and sexually diverse clan that this earth was ever blessed with, and yet...et tu?

I want to remain the bigger person. The one who can see that this is a democracy, and that we all have our opinions and beliefs, and are protected to utilize free speech to express them. I was upset when friends started deleting friends, bashing each other and causing mayhem over the debates. I am not sure I can maintain that perspective.

I am a pansexual middle aged woman, who believes in racial equality, is the grand daughter of 4 immigrants, believes in the personal right to chose to be armed or have an abortion, does not think that we can blame Muslims for all of our problems, sees that opioids are just the latest drug epidemic...but are not the first or last to kill people at alarming rates. I know that I may never, in my life span, get to vote for a candidate I want because I probably will have to vote against the candidate I do not want. I know the people in my life have good hearts, kind spirits, are generous and loving humans.

And yet, they seem to be in favor of a man that more closely resembles Hitler than I am comfortable with. A man that condones and often promotes violence, advocates for racist agendas, cannot or at least has not towed a party line with any sort of conviction, has been in several failed marriages, never held office, and said in public that he would sleep with his own daughter had he not spawned her. He has yet to say anything that contains substance in terms of policy, and dodges personal responsibility for his own actions at a rate which I have previously seen only in films. His hateful rhetoric and aggressive speeches inspire the uneducated and disheartened to harm innocent people, and he has encouraged a violent response to people that protest against him...their right under the 1st amendment.

How do I maintain friendships with people that support that? I am not voicing an opinion on my choice for candidates, and most of you would be shocked to know my political perspective if I ever chose to share it. However, I have a moral obligation to myself, to my value set, to my fiancee, to my mother, to my friends, to my community and to my country to stand up AGAINST racism, bigotry, misogyny, violence and hate. I cannot ignore, deny or excuse the choice to support those qualities in a person that is asking to LEAD us, as a country, to being greater.

I feel like the kid on the schoolyard that has to choose between being silent when a hurtful joke is told, or speaking up and risking losing people I love to stand up for what is right and good. I will not be passive in the face of oppression. I will not support hate to be liked. I do not want to lose your friendships, but I will not remain reticent in this situation. It is not who I am, or who I am willing to be.