Hello!

I'm Squirrel-Girl. I'm delightful.

5553548 Suuure you are.

I'm The Narwhal Assassin. Presently, I'm The Sp00ky Narwhal in anticipation of Halloween.
If you're part of Christian Bronies, Atheist Bronies, The Hellsing Organization, the Church of the Burning Whale, or the Antifascist Iron League, you might know me.
If not, here I am.

5553548

What am I doing here?

5554248

Two reasons.

1) I invited you.

2) You clicked the 'Join' button.

5556800

Well, that proves that yo aren't a complete idiot.

5553548

Hi.

5553548 I'm keulan742, and I'm mildly annoyed that there wasn't a group for liberals on Fimfiction already.

5569956

Indeed.

5569006

Yes you can.

5569959

5569975

What if I told you?
I came here
To make friends
And not get killed
For being a conservative Christian Republican?

5682018 I'd say that it doesn't bode well for a liberal forum that turns people away for holding opposing views. The optics of discouraging challengers would only harm the reputation of this forum and the people making that decision.

Personally speaking, I'm an admin over at a forum that's more conservative than liberal, and I'm pretty well accustomed to stepping outside of my own comfort-zone and conversing with people with opposing views civilly and respectfully. Within reason. I'm not the only one, either.

What you can expect is that in any debate, you're going to be out-numbered. In conveying a unique perspective, you have your work cut out for you.

I don't know you well enough to know how you'll fair socially, here. I can tell you that most reasonable folks won't fly off the handle over economic differences. It's a deceptively complex subject, and at the end of the day, there's not much personal friction to be had over it in comparison to other issues, regardless of its importance on people's daily lives.

People generally tend to be a bit more on edge when it comes to social issues. There's really no reconciling differences between LGBT people and those who disprove of them for who and what they are.

As for your religion . . . well, plenty of liberals are Christian. I counted myself among them for about twenty-two years . . . but now I'm an anti-theist, and have been for about eight or nine years. Despite my stance on religion, I generally don't have a problem getting along with religious folk, and don't even make a point of making an issue about it until I run into a Christian Jihadist or when religion is the basis of some other issue that I feel the need to challenge the person on.

As for the rest of it, positions on either side of the fence are extremely varied. The more nuanced and complex your views are, which is something that tends to happen the more you find yourself, the more it's likely that some common ground can be achieved.There's also different camps within both conservatism and liberalism that don't agree with one another.

5682018

What if I told you?
I came here
To make friends
And not get killed
For being a conservative Christian Republican?

I used to be a Christian. In fact in my mid-to-late-teens I might have gotten a little nuts with it. I mean, who reads The Scarlet Letter in high school and finds themself sympathizing with Puritan ideology?

I've always held mostly liberal views for the most part. Off the top of my head, I can only remember my former stances on pre-marital sex (although that's not really a political view but I'd still put that in the conservative ideology category), abortion and drugs as deviations from that, and perhaps my current stance on gun control. Maybe some very brief, poorly-thought theocratic leanings.

Well, while I was just fine eating up whatever the preacher at church said, I wasn't too big on reading the bible thoroughly myself. I've just never had the attention span to read a thousand-page book in an archaic form of English I could barely understand for a few pages before my brain quits on me. So I never actually encountered a conflict between religion and my pro-LGBT views until I was about sixteen, and for the next several years I was trying to "re-interpret" those parts of the bible thinking for sure there was some kind of misunderstanding, until I became more of a Christian deist (and eventually atheist.)

I think the experience might be useful for anyone who doesn't want to give up religion but wants to support LGBT issues, so if you ever you find yourself wanting to buck conservative norms on LGBT like John McCain does with torture or Rand Paul does with NSA spying and war, but don't want to drop religion, give me a PM. I've got some thoughts on that. Of course, I have no idea what your views actually are.

As for you being a conservative, discussing politics on here is probably going to be stressful. I mean, I for one encourage dissenting opinions and I don't think echo chambers where ideas go unchallenged are particularly healthy, but there may be a lot of stress. But outside of that, I don't see why we can't all hang out and get along.

5682150
5682064
You two just won me a bet of ten dollors a friend made saying I was going to be banned right awayy. Thx!
I was raised in a home with the above ideas, so I really just want to know about how you guys believe the way you do. I doubt I will argue. I am way way WAY too lazy for that, but I belive in Friendship is Magic.

5683122

so I really just want to know about how you guys believe the way you do

Well, I love to hear myself talk, as you've probably gathered by now, If you have anything specific in mind, I'd recommend creating a topic on it.

5683122

You two just won me a bet of ten dollors a friend made saying I was going to be banned right awayy. Thx!

Oh? You should have bet a thousand.

(Stop encouraging him/her to gamble, Hippie! It's a senseless risk! )

I mean, never mind that.

so I really just want to know about how you guys believe the way you do

If that isn't an invite for paragraphs and paragraphs of political ranting, I don't know what is. I gotta keep telling myself to take it slow and not give in to temptation, namely laying it all out on the table right here and now. I'm sure you'll get a gist of everyone's views as more threads pop up.

I doubt I will argue.

You'd be surprised how easy it could be to end up in a debate, even if one tells themself they're going to stay away from it. Which, really, isn't a bad thing.

but I belive in Friendship is Magic.

5682018 Hey, hi, this is out-of-the-blue. I was looking over all our threads as a group (because I was bored), and found your comment here. As an admin, I'll personally assure you that it's fine if you're a Conservative Christian. So long as you're respectful of others and their beliefs, they should be respectful of yours.
If they aren't... Bad things happen.

Again, I know this is out of the blue, and you probably don't care anymore, but I'm playing catch-up. Sorry for the weeks-late response, but better late than never, right?

If intros are required, then I'm dva4lyfe. Joined because why not. If my views are important, then I tend to just pick and choose what I like from conservative and liberals. Example: Okay with gay marriage, and very pro-life.

5719879 Well, hello there.

I'd like to say that it's more common for people to lie somwhere in the middle, but I would actually need to verify that, and then there's the very human compulsion towards conformity, which often causes people to gravitate more towards accepting the views of their group than they otherwise would.

At their core, one might be able to break down social conservatism and liberalism as being a push/pull between traditional values and morality, and an effort to either challenge or change the status quo, and that creates a common thread between various stances on the left and right, but people aren't just motivated by those common threads.

Personally, I think I'm solidly to the left on pretty much every issue, but it wasn't all that long ago that I was super-right on the death penalty, and I've flip-flopped on the issue of abortion a couple of times in my life. There's also more than one 'camp' on both sides of the fence, where you can easily have leftists butt heads with leftists.

5553548 Hi! I'm Keam. I was invited by Jessey Coffee and joined because it felt fitting. I'm a liberal by my countries standards, but since I'm swedish that would be a little more left winged in the eyes of Americans.

Apparently i'm a contributor, too, thanks to jessey coffee

I'm actually a moderate, formerly a fairly radical liberal, and at one point I identified as libertarian. Was recently kicked out of a radical liberal forum for claiming there were legitimate reasons to dislike Hillary, as I supported Bernie over her. So I'm curious what type of Liberal's populate this forum since the word "liberal" refers to multiple often opposing ideologies right now.

Usually "classical liberalism" is the label used to refer to what was considered mainstream liberalism around 10 years ago. Characterized by personal freedom, equal treatment for all, belief in a meritocracy, and equality of opportunity.

However there is a rapidly growing "alternative" form of liberalism of which there seems to be no generally agreed upon label, that holds to beliefs that are oftentimes outright contradictory towards classical liberalism. Generally believing in things such as restricting freedoms of perceived hateful ideologies, segregated safe spaces, and equality of outcome.

5553548

The name is StormLuna. At one time I was pretty far to the right but it was when Trump got the GOP nomination I began to move towards the left and at this point, I tend to think of myself as center left. I see the problems with the GOP and how they care nothing about the disadvantaged. I see how they shun things like Medicaid expansion. It is things like that and Trump himself that caused me to move to the left. Now I wouldn't say I'm a full blown liberal but when it comes to the economic side of things and things such as healthcare and education, I am definitely to the left of center.