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My Children Won’t Let Me Vote for Donald Trump

My wife and I have two kids that we’re pretty crazy about.

We take the job of raising them very seriously.

We teach our kids that consistency matters; that in this life our words and our actions should align—what we say and what we do, need to have lots of touch points.

We teach them that all people are equal, regardless of their skin color, their race, their gender, their place of birth, the language they speak, their religious views, their income level, their gender identity, or their sexual orientation.

We teach them that treating people with dignity and compassion is the greatest calling upon our lives.

We teach them to protect the bullied, to see the hurting, to defend the marginalized, to be someone who cares about other people.

We teach them that humility, gentleness, and integrity are lost arts well worth preserving.

There’s no way we could say any of those things to our children—and vote for Donald Trump for President. They would rightly call us out.

Even at their young ages they would see the absolute disconnect, the great hypocrisy on display, and they’d be rightly confused by the mixed message we were sending them as parents.

I wonder what those moms and dads who support Donald trump regularly teach their children. I wonder if any of the above things matter in their homes and around their dinner tables. If they do, I wonder how they spin their politics to them.

You can’t really tell your kids you’re against bullying, and vote for a world-class bully for President.

You can’t claim that racial, religious, and gender equality are important to you, while supporting someone so fully committed to division and exclusion and discrimination.

You can’t tell your children that your Christian faith matters to you, while advocating for a man whose entire religious engagement has been conceived as a crass, thinly veiled campaign tool; one that mocks people with genuine spiritual convictions.

You can’t tell your daughters that they’re equal to men and worthy of respect, and simultaneously cast your vote for an Olympic level misogynist who regularly offers the crudest evaluations of women’s physical appearances, emotional stability, and intellectual capacities.

You can’t tell your sons that they ought to fully value women, while giving them a national role model whose caveman-esque comments about his numerous wives, his co-workers, women in general, and even his own daughter— dehumanize them at every turn.

You can’t say to your kids that decency and compassion are things you value, while lifting up someone to the highest office in out country who is so fully devoid of them.

If you’re a parent who supports Trump, I’m not questioning your politics. I’m questioning what you’re telling your kids life is really about, and how you’re demonstrating consistency and integrity to them.

Because it seems to me you’re either:
1) Literally teaching your kids that being racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and misogynistic are all suitable qualities for the President of the United States—and for their lives.
2) Teaching the importance of them being people of character, goodness, and deceny—but that the President doesn’t need to play by those rules.
3) Teaching them to do as you say, but not as you vote.

I’d never support Donald Trump for a nearly endless list of reasons, but perhaps most importantly because I wouldn’t be able to look my children in the eye and tell them that they can disregard everything we’ve ever sewn into their lives; that none of it mattered, that it’s really anything goes now. I need to vote so I can stand proudly before my kids and so that I can sleep at night, knowing I did the best I could to give them the kind of future they deserve.

A few weeks ago my 11-year old read a quote from Trump about women he found online, and asked incredulously, “How can he say something like that—and then have women vote for him?” I didn’t have an answer for him. Maybe you do.

Parents, when it comes to the kind of world you say you want your children to inherit—you’ll need to put your vote where your mouth is, because you get to choose that world in November.

What does that world look like? What matters in that world?
What kind of adults do you want your children to become?
How do you want your kids to look at you on Election Day?

As parents, we know our children are always watching us—even in the voting booth.

 

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