My reason for posting this question is to get some perspective, since I don’t live further west than Indiana.

Indiana has a lot of conservative tendencies, usually opposes progressive policies, and a little old school bigotry in the form of religion based disagreement with people’s life styles, like letter community.

From an outsiders perspective, TX, OK, MO etc are even more extreme.

This permalink above from a comment from a person referencing recently proposed legislation against letter community people specifically, though there’s tons of examples of bigotry like the school principal getting sued for discrimination due to a kid’s hair (black hair).

We know Lemmy is a bit more populated with left than right thinkers, but regardless, what’s going on in these western plains states? Is it as bad as it looks?

Do you personally know some sweet old church ladies who ‘hate the gays because they’ll going to hell’ or are there just more extreme law makers being elected that don’t represent the majority?

EDIT: tried to fix link to a conversation instead of a login page.

  • blusterydayve26@midwest.social
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    10 months ago

    The cities are liberal, but there’s a lot of rural communities that have never had to deal with people before.

    The northeast is known for being kind but not nice. Four New Yorkers will carry your luggage down the subway stairs and never look at you once. The south is known for being nice, but not kind. That’s where the poisoned sweet tea comes from. The west is known for neither, if you have car trouble, the best you can hope for in Portland is being ignored. The Midwest is known for being both nice and kind, where neighbors will shovel you out and wish you a nice day before going on to the next car.

    • RedFox@infosec.pubOP
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      10 months ago

      I tend to agree with the nice and kind part of Midwest, with exception that it seems like we’re becoming more hard-line against things people call woke or alternate life styles.

      I’m using a universal ‘we’ since, and I think you’re right - there’s a difference between urban city thinking and rural community thinking.

      I have a whole theory about the city thinking and rural thinking having to due with ownership or property, but that’s a whole other thing…

      • blusterydayve26@midwest.social
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        10 months ago

        I don’t know if it’s property so much as just being around and having to live around so many different people. Like, if I take the bus, I’ll probably pass a hundred different folks to and from work, and only two are going to annoy me.

        But, it’s a lot easier to be insular if I live in a small town with 300 people, and can easily assume all my problems are someone else’s fault. I’ll see three new people a week when the tourists stop at the gas station.

  • LinkOpensChest.wav@midwest.social
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    10 months ago

    South Dakota here. I typed out a long reply several times, but I don’t know how to explain it.

    Our governor is obviously an extremist, fully subscribing to the concept of a “border crisis,” anti-LGBTQIA+ policies, being so overtly racist that she’s banned from three reservations.

    I’m a “redneck” looking cis male, and people will share with me their opinions, thinking I’ll agree. These people don’t think people like Noem and Trump go far enough. It’s actually important to understand that even the “nice church people” types believe this. They support much more extreme policies than what we’re seeing.

    Edit: I forgot to say this, but this is only responding to the contents of your post. Your link takes me to the kbin login page.

    • RedFox@infosec.pubOP
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      10 months ago

      These people don’t think people like Noem and Trump go far enough. It’s actually important to understand that even the “nice church people” types believe this. They support much more extreme policies than what we’re seeing.

      Holy shit, what do they want, a culling?

      There’s some mega churches around me, but they are very modern, kid glove, and do the whole ‘come as you are’. That’s not the same thing as accepting people in the letter community, they still think those people are living wrong, but they are generally more compassionate about it.

      Edit, I think some of those churches would love to have letter community people attend, but that’s because they’d hope to love on them enough to have them change their life. I honestly believe they’d be doing it out of genuine concern or ‘love’, regardless of whether that’s misguided or not. How misguided and crazy that sounds to people usually depends on how they feel about these people’s lives and if you accept them for who they are or not.

      Example, I think most of the common mega church people around here would follow the Bible’s parable about the adulteress and ‘let the person without sin cast the first stone’ approach. God in that example shows he cares about her more than the bad thing she did first, then calls out people for a lack of compassion and thinking what they were doing wrong was more OK than her, but lastly said ‘go and sin no more’ which was basically ‘try to stop doing this’. My post isnt about religion, I’m just using this as an example to illustrate that I think there’s varying degrees of people/religion/bigotry and I am not sure if regions are all the same.

      What you’re describing sounds far more extreme to me than people around me in Indiana, but again, I might be missing things.

      • gramathy@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        Holy shit, what do they want, a culling?

        Um, yes? There have been plenty of mask off statements to that effect, just imagine how many more keep the mask on for the cameras.