This week, the same post keeps popping up on my social media feeds: “I care less about who you vote for than how you treat people who vote differently from you.” For the people posting these memes, politics appears to be no different than sports: something that’s fun to observe from a distance but that doesn’t meaningfully affect daily life.
They have the luxury of disconnecting from the consequences of their vote because they are too wealthy, too white, or too ignorant to pause and consider that human lives hang in the balance.
How you vote is how you treat people, in the most profound possible sense.
The way you vote will have more far-reaching consequences for humans across the planet than just about anything else the average person can do. A mean Facebook post, a rude public interaction, even cutting a person permanently out of your life are all trivial as compared to the effects of voting.
The decision about whom to vote for may be the most important moral choice anyone ever makes. And in this election, it may determine whether we ever again in our lifetimes have the ability to vote in a free and fair election.
That’s why I can’t be your friend, can’t have a relationship with you, can’t accept it if you vote for Donald Trump.
You do not love someone if you vote for someone who would happily dissolve their marriage.
You are not a friend to someone whom you would consign to poverty because they have a medical bill, to someone you would condemn to decades of incarceration because they use drugs, to someone you think it should be legal to discriminate against.
You cannot claim to love someone when you vote to harm them. You cannot demand that they not hold you accountable for that.
It doesn’t matter if you think you’re not racist, if you abhor the bad things Trump has done, if you’re “only” supporting him because you oppose abortion, or because you think humans should suffer and die so you can pay less in taxes. A vote for Trump is a vote for everything he does and will do. And it is most assuredly not a pro-life decision.
You are not pro-life if you think life only matters when it’s in the womb.
If you can’t care about kidnapped children in cages.
If you can’t care about Trump’s 19 sexual assault victims, all of whom were once fetuses.
If you do not care about the hundreds of thousands of people dead from a pandemic Donald Trump could have helped to control.
If you do not care about the children whose lives will be disrupted should the Supreme Court destroy their parents’ marriages.
You cannot claim to be pro-life solely because you want abortion clinics closed. If you think a child should starve because her mother falls into poverty, if you believe it is fine for babies to be sexually abused by ICE, if you think loving mothers who choose to emigrate should have their children stolen, if you think women should be denied care for their developing babies because they are poor, you care little for human life.
If you think an embryo should have an absolute right to freedom but my living, breathing daughter should not, you are my enemy. And you’re damn right I will not treat your vote with respect, nor continue my relationship with you.
A vote for Trump is a vote against families, whether you want to pretend otherwise or not. If you believe that it’s “too expensive” to fund health care that could save the lives of mothers and slow the maternal mortality epidemic, too expensive to fund families by guaranteeing paid parental leave, but that women should be forced to carry their babies to term no matter the personal cost, you’re a bad person.
Trump’s appalling deeds are not a secret. So when you vote for him because you want your party to retain power, or because you think a hypothetical future you who is a billionaire will pay less in taxes, you are buying these small joys with other human lives. You don’t get to claim the moral high ground. You certainly don’t get to climb up on your martyr cross and whine about how the big bad opponents of fascism are just so mean for asserting that human lives matter.
Let’s be clear: At this point, there is one reason—and only one reason—a person can stomach a vote for Trump. It’s because that person is a bad person.
Good people don’t continue relationships with bad people. Abusers are not entitled to love from those whom they abuse.
Trump supporters have proven remarkably immune to new information and the usual tactics of persuasion. So it comes as no surprise that they’re now trying to shame us when we judge them for their morally reprehensible votes. Don’t let them get away with it. Our actions have consequences, and if you vote to destroy the life of someone you love because of your own selfish desires, you no longer deserve a loving relationship with that person.
If you’re thinking about voting third party or withholding your vote altogether, please read this first.
Your vote will save lives. It could save your own life. Here’s how you can vote in your state.