I am flabbergasted every day to read people who earnestly think Obama is turning America into a socialist state, when I detect no change at all.

The two mutually exclusive perceptions of reality hit me when our daughter, age 11, wrote to the local paper here in NC to oppose the constitutional amendment on the ballot in May that would ban not just gay marriage but gov’t recognition of domestic partnerships.

She said that people should be able to be who they are if they’re not hurting anyone, and that the gay couples she knows seem happy. And she said that she’s only 11 but she knows that marriage is supposed to be about love and that people can’t help who they love.

So a grown-up responds in the online comments with a point-by-point refutation, longer than her little letter, bemoaning how the sodomites are brainwashing the kids at school.

And it occured to me that there would be nothing in the world I could say to reach that guy. If you believe being gay is a matter of choice/conspiracy/work-of-the-devil, then my daughter’s point about “being allowed to be who you are” is hogwash.

The only way that guy’s mind could change is personal experience. This guy’s kids, if he has any, are probably experiencing life in a different way, and even some leading Republicans here are saying out loud that if this amendment passes, it will be repealed before that long because young people don’t support it..

So I think this is death throes, but there’s no doubt these throes involve lashing out and hurting people.

Right wingers are an aging demographic. May their values die out with them.

Editor’s Response: Indeed, one can hope. And we are really proud of our niece and her well written letter!