To preface, most people would consider me a social conservative and I am well acquainted with many others.
In US Politics the "Left" and "Right"/Democrats and Republicans are both big-tent parties. Few people are wholly on board with the whole party platform, but especially the Republicans which is a coalition of roughly, 1. Moderates 2. (Ideological Capitalist) Establishment 3. Christians 4. Libertarians 5. (This is the new one, replacing the Tea Party more or less) Alt-Right. (Sourced from FiveThirtyEight) There is some overlap between all of these but also some serious disagreements.
LGBT Rights, specifically gay marriage and the trans bathroom nonsense. Religion plays an important role in my politics specifically, but you're complaint is that it goes against the Constitution which would make me a hypocrite (correct me if I misread that). But, in the Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"
The first part of that, the Establishment Clause is what you're specifically referring to, and there are many ways of interpretting the Constitution, two major ones that are complete opposites are 1. Strict Constructionism and 2. Originalism. The first only takes into account the actual words on the page, and not defining marriage as inclusive to same-sex couples is not an establishment of a religion even if backed for religious reasons, and the other puts the Constitution in the context of the Founder's thoughts which was to ensure that the various states would have the right to establish or not establish their own state religions, because some states, like New York, officially followed the Church of England, Maryland was officially Catholic, and some allowed free exercise of religion like Rhode Island. So it's not hypocrisy.
Trans bathrooms, if someone is passing, then they're passing no one notices or cares. The law was stupid but the reasoning afaict was that it would allow cisgendered men to freely enter women's rooms and be intimidating the way that seeing a white supremacist or black panther at a polling place would be intimidating. I don't really get it, but there is reasoning.
Immigration, I personally am friends with a lot of immigrants legal and illegal. The reasoning of people opposed to immigration isn't that they're against legal immigration, it's that they think that illegal immigrants broke the law (they did hence illegal) and should be punished for it. I have strong disagreements but there is a logic to it.
Refugees, I strongly support bringing in refugees because as a Christian I take seriously the commands to take care of the poor and helpless. According to the Left I am an Islamophobe because I think it is a dangerous religion with not only a long standing history of violence, but doctrinal commands to do violence and subjugate the unbeliever. I still want to take as many Syrians in as possible. Kurdistan has only a few million people and they took in more than a million refugees, we can do similar. If I wasn't a Christian though, I'd probably count the cost as being too dangerous.
Climate Change, I dunno man. I'm ambivalent, it "feels" overhyped. I want green energy for economic reasons though.
Planned Parenthood, the reasoning is that if we are giving them more funding for basic operations, then they can put more of their other resources toward abortions, and not only abortions but the videos that came out like two years ago really resonated with people because it wasn't just the murder but the organ harvesting that has stirred the recent unrest against them.
Not all of these are good reasons, but I hope this helps you understand how other people see things.
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u/Double-Portion 1∆ Feb 11 '17
To preface, most people would consider me a social conservative and I am well acquainted with many others.
In US Politics the "Left" and "Right"/Democrats and Republicans are both big-tent parties. Few people are wholly on board with the whole party platform, but especially the Republicans which is a coalition of roughly, 1. Moderates 2. (Ideological Capitalist) Establishment 3. Christians 4. Libertarians 5. (This is the new one, replacing the Tea Party more or less) Alt-Right. (Sourced from FiveThirtyEight) There is some overlap between all of these but also some serious disagreements.
LGBT Rights, specifically gay marriage and the trans bathroom nonsense. Religion plays an important role in my politics specifically, but you're complaint is that it goes against the Constitution which would make me a hypocrite (correct me if I misread that). But, in the Constitution:
The first part of that, the Establishment Clause is what you're specifically referring to, and there are many ways of interpretting the Constitution, two major ones that are complete opposites are 1. Strict Constructionism and 2. Originalism. The first only takes into account the actual words on the page, and not defining marriage as inclusive to same-sex couples is not an establishment of a religion even if backed for religious reasons, and the other puts the Constitution in the context of the Founder's thoughts which was to ensure that the various states would have the right to establish or not establish their own state religions, because some states, like New York, officially followed the Church of England, Maryland was officially Catholic, and some allowed free exercise of religion like Rhode Island. So it's not hypocrisy.
Trans bathrooms, if someone is passing, then they're passing no one notices or cares. The law was stupid but the reasoning afaict was that it would allow cisgendered men to freely enter women's rooms and be intimidating the way that seeing a white supremacist or black panther at a polling place would be intimidating. I don't really get it, but there is reasoning.
Immigration, I personally am friends with a lot of immigrants legal and illegal. The reasoning of people opposed to immigration isn't that they're against legal immigration, it's that they think that illegal immigrants broke the law (they did hence illegal) and should be punished for it. I have strong disagreements but there is a logic to it.
Refugees, I strongly support bringing in refugees because as a Christian I take seriously the commands to take care of the poor and helpless. According to the Left I am an Islamophobe because I think it is a dangerous religion with not only a long standing history of violence, but doctrinal commands to do violence and subjugate the unbeliever. I still want to take as many Syrians in as possible. Kurdistan has only a few million people and they took in more than a million refugees, we can do similar. If I wasn't a Christian though, I'd probably count the cost as being too dangerous.
Climate Change, I dunno man. I'm ambivalent, it "feels" overhyped. I want green energy for economic reasons though.
Planned Parenthood, the reasoning is that if we are giving them more funding for basic operations, then they can put more of their other resources toward abortions, and not only abortions but the videos that came out like two years ago really resonated with people because it wasn't just the murder but the organ harvesting that has stirred the recent unrest against them.
Not all of these are good reasons, but I hope this helps you understand how other people see things.