Summary
Ahead of the 2024 election, Generation Z has sparked a trend on TikTok, “canceling out” family members’ votes by voting opposite their Trump-supporting relatives. Many young women post videos showing them voting for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, contrasting with family members supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump.
While some videos are lighthearted, others reveal deeper tensions, as participants highlight personal stakes in defending rights and choices.
Although Gen Z voters lean slightly toward Harris, a significant portion supports Trump, creating a divided landscape. With over 47 million early votes cast, polls show a tight race, especially in key swing states.
I know someone in this circumstance, and it comes down to exactly one issue: abortion. The spouse is Roman Catholic and cannot support abortion, so despite disagreeing with most of the republican platform, they feel obligated to vote with the party that opposes it. I had the same thing crop up in 2008 with a roommate who was Greek Orthodox and in every way one of the most progressive people I knew, but they voted McCain purely on this one issue out of religious guilt.
That is bullshit.
They can support abortion as much as they want, they don’t want to support it.
I hate it when people say that they can’t do X because their religion, be honest and say that you don’t want to do X because they want to follow the rules of their religion.
And abortion being legal doesn’t mean shit for a Catholic.
No one’s up in arms because non-Catholics eat meat during lent or don’t believe in transubstantiation.
Their religious belief has no place in government. If they don’t want to do it, then don’t.
I 100% agree with the sentiment, but you can’t really compare not following religious rituals and what the religious consider murder. The existence of injustice is enough to mean something to someone. That’s how empathy works.
People get up in arms over the death penalty, and I don’t think it’s right to tell them that if they don’t like it, just don’t commit a capital crime or pay attention to scheduled executions.
The same for both Ukraine and Israel/Palestine, people are demonstrating and attempting to bring their beliefs to the government. The people who have true conversations about abortion see these as equivalent.
That is true of everything that isn’t barred by the fundamentals of physics, and disingenuous and you know it.
You can murder people, you can enslave others, Hindus can slaughter and eat cows, etc, you just don’t want to because it’s illegal.
For most religious people the tenents of their faith are core to their being and not something they just kinda like. Otherwise they tend to deconstruct from their religion after the inertia runs out. That’s why religion in the West is on a downward trajectory outside of Islam which is driven by immigration.
I fully support reproductive rights as much as the next guy, but let’s not pretend that the person outlined above single issue voting against abortion isn’t looking at the other side as otherwise great but you have to accept a few sanctioned murders. You would probably be single issue voting if we had a modern Aztec government that was close to a utopia but practiced human sacrifices to Quetzalcoatl because it maintains prosperity.
Real laws are different though, they have a state sanctioned justice system that forces compliance.
Following a religion in the US is not regulated by law, but is a choice.
Sadly, groups of people are working to change this.
If a religion’s rules do become proper laws then you can use “can’t” correctly.
But they choose to subscribe to that religion and could choose to stop. They could choose to no longer make it core to their being.
That is exactly my point, this is similar to veganism/vegetarianism, it is a choice you want to make and continue to make.
And I get it, I have had the privilege of growing up mostly without religion, that obviously colours my viewpoint, but if people could accept that religion is a choice rather than a fact the world would be a way better place.
Can you really choose what you believe, though? Could you make yourself stop believing in gravity or anything else you truly believe in? Could you make yourself believe in flat earth if someone told you too? The mind isn’t something so malleable that you get to pick and choose your beliefs like a salad bar. Religious beliefs are one of the hardest to change, with even those leaving organized religion ending up frequently still believing in a God of some kind.
I grew up in a religious household but open minded and science oriented, so I deconverted and consider myself an atheist. I whole heartedly agree that the world would be a better place without religion, it’s the world’s greatest con job, but let’s not kid ourselves about the spectrum of the word choice here. It’s a (lesser) reverse of the religious telling anyone that isn’t heteronormative in any way that those are choices. It’s all brain chemistry occurring in a black box that we know vanishingly little about for how much we have studied it.
That is a fair point, and I am not asking to change any persons beliefs, I just think it is a copout to blame X for taking away your agency when you want it taken away.
I don’t think they are blaming their religion for their voting in so much as outlining that their convictions that are informed by/in line with their religion (life begins at conception) makes abortion their largest single issue. Those of honest conviction see abortion as murder, and specifically murder of a baby, and that trumps the rest of the ticket. There are plenty of grifters and hypocrites on that side too, but I would hazard that the “silent majority” on the right are the sincere convictions type.