Fox News. It's just not gonna happen. I can't. I literally cringe and some part of me dies. Any kind of relationship where Fox News would be playing in any other sense than an ironic one would be akin to slow antifreeze poisoning. Maybe you don't realize it at first, maybe the soda is just flat, but eventually it creeps up and one day you realize your soul is dead. Dead like O'Reilly's.
Everything started fine. Doctor. Liked the same things. Love of craft beer. But then I perused his profile one more time, and there it was. "Conservative". It's the kiss of death that the accommodating me has always wanted to deny. Can I really be that close minded to a mind set, one that I shunned because I found it close minded? Say it ain't so, Joe, say it ain't so.
But I persisted, because maybe he wasn't as far right as he thought. Perhaps he was fiscally, but socially he believed in equal rights. Maybe I could look past it. Maybe I'd even learn something.
Nah.
He asked about religion. And though I believe in God, I'm not a churchgoer. In fact, I'm not even a huge fan of organized religion. So I explained. I got what is perhaps the worst response back. Religion is necessary as a moral compass. Goodness gracious do I hate that. I don't need some book written 2,000 years ago to tell me how to be a good person. I think I got that shit on lockdown. But fine, he's a religious man, and in a medical field maybe it's necessary to maintain any kind of sanity. If you can't turn to God at the end of the long day, then what's left? Whiskey? Probably not medically advised.
Then he moved onto politics. Where did I lay on the spectrum? If this were a Kinsey scale of politics, I'd be a 5 and that's against God. Liberals should not lay with other liberals. So I explained that although I grew up in an ultra conservative home, I struck out on my own path, joined the gay rights group at my high school, and now leaned to the left. I had the black sheep of my family, but I embraced it because through my own learning, I realized that I had always been a liberal.
At this point, he confessed his love of Fox News. That he believed in civil unions for gay couples, but not marriage...that's an institution of God. (and here I thought it was a piece of paper given out by the state that got you tax perks) And it all became clear to me, that although I wish it wasn't a deal breaker, it is. Relationships don't succeed when the couple isn't on the same path. When their lifestyles differ. When their ideas of raising kids clash. When one person would rather stab the TV than watch anything in the 'no spin zone'.
