How to love a family that votes against your identity

It's late in the day, sometime in the summer, and I'm sitting at a dining room table listening to my uncle explain the gay agenda.

I don't know what year or sequence of events led to this lecture. All I know is that the memory stains with the unadulterated vitriol emanating from my uncle's speech. I'm too young to have coherent beliefs of my own, save for my parent's respectable Republican ideology. I don't understand why we don't like gay people because my aunt and her roommate are always playing mermaids with me and sneaking me sweets when my mom isn't around. I guess my uncle never gave her a chance because now he's drawing a diagram explaining the insidious nature of homosexual existence.

Apparently, they want to push their nontraditional ways of living onto children and prey on them with their perverted ways. I'm confused because I love sleeping at my aunt's house and playing with her dogs. She wakes me up for breakfast and asks how soupy I want my oatmeal.

My uncle finishes up his speech and wraps it up by explaining his constitutional right to protect his children against homosexuals by any means necessary, even with violence. My parents shift uncomfortably, and my grandpa pulls out a Bible. I counter his argument with the notion Jesus loved everyone and talked with the woman at the well even when everyone wanted to stone her.

I thought the reference was very clever.

My grandpa had me read a section of his Bible out loud that explained that homosexuality is aberrant and succumbing to sinful thoughts. During the car ride home, I look out the window and feel sick in my stomach that I can't place.

Fast forward to 2008, and my interest in current events is full force. I have been a good daughter, eagerly visiting the Ronald Reagan Museum and enthusiastically announcing my love for the president. Whenever someone asks who my favorite president is, I say, "Ronald Reagan!" while my parents smile. I posted a picture of my political orientation test on my Instagram just a few months before: I am 77% in favor of Mitt Romney, and I captioned the screenshot, "Go Romney!!". My friend argues with me in the comments. I go back and forth with my best friend on the bus who thinks Obama is better, but I win the argument with the indisputable 'he wants to raise taxes!'

She rolls her eyes and promises to ask her mom if I can come over for a sleepover tomorrow.

I can't remember when, but my family is sitting down for dinner. The news is playing, and we are talking about the 2012 race. I don't know what changed, but I only know that I hesitated about Mitt Romney. My dad tenses across the table as he asks why. I explain that I don't like how he's against gay marriage, and I watch as his face slowly reddens. He explodes and rips himself away from the table,

taking laps around the house to calm down. When he returned, he threatened to take away my computer because he didn't know what I'd been reading, accusing my computer of making me think this way. I go to bed with the same sick feeling in my stomach.

It's 2015, and access to the internet has made me worse. I now follow activist accounts on Instagram and instigate arguments with my family about equal rights under the law. I roll my eyes while listening to the pastor recite Ephesians 5:22-33 and argue with my mom over the fact that women should be submissive to their husbands. Same-sex marriage was legalized across the country, and I celebrate with my aunt, who can finally marry her long-term girlfriend. My mom and I fight about this decision because she thinks it's not fair for gay couples to ruin the convention of marriage. She says they should have their category of legal matrimony but can't elaborate on this idea. I admonish her for not supporting her sister, and she admonishes me for not understanding God's will.

I live in a big city now with a big girl apartment and bills. I started dating women and found a girl who made my stomach flip like I had never felt before. I confide in her, and she encourages me to rely on my 'found family,' but I don't want a found family.

I want my mom, who threw me a surprise party when I turned fourteen and never stopped loving me. I want my dad, who taught me how to use a drill bit and didn't like IPAs, but he loved drinking beer with me. I want my grandma, who showed me the Sound of Music and made my favorite pecan pie during Thanksgiving, to soothe me with her lifted East Tennessee accent. I want my grandpa, who set up sprinklers on the swing set during the heat of a Georgia summer and always calls me a 'great American patriot,' to send me a letter as he did anywhere I moved.

How can I hold these realities together? How can I hold tight to my nostalgia for a family who loves me even when our dogmas are fundamentally incompatible?

I want to say that my family is a victim of the polarized political climate and deeply divisive algorithms. It would be so easy to decry Russian-backed propaganda, the chokehold of a different generation, or the forced ignorance of an insulated childhood. Can I keep overlooking political differences when those beliefs directly impact my identity? Am I selfish for considering that a line crossed when that line only appears about my interests? At what point does our shared bloodline become soured with the foundational disrespect of an individual's existence?

I don't know the answers to these questions. All I know is that my dad, who once threatened to ground me for supporting gay marriage, now casually flicks through a picture he took with his company in front of the pride flag flying out front of their building and only remarks on its poor saturation. My mother, who once chastised Obergefell v. Hodges, now goes to a family friend's gay wedding and only complains about the burgundy suit that washes out the bride. I'm not qualified enough to absolve my family of the ideologies that would get them canceled within minutes on Twitter.

But I can afford them some grace.

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