Yeah I respect the ethos in a lot of ways. Their philosophy only really fails when like... They disagree on stuff.

"I don't give a fuck where your kids get educated. Just don't tell me where to educate mine." Is fine until "well they need to be being taught 'x y and z.'" And you're met with "LIKE HELL THEY DO, ASSHOLE, GET OFF MY LAWN." because they can't agree on x y and z.

Or

"We don't do drugs in this house. And if my kids touch the stuff, they're out on their own. But, why should johnny law have a say what's in my greenhouse?"

Or

"I am fiercly pro life. But, I don't think anyone outside this house should be telling my daughter whether or not she has access to an abortion. She's just disowned if she ever chooses to access one."

Where like, their rugged individualism is so fierce they'll happily hurt people close to them to maintain their version of what's right. Tough to respect that.

As a child of the 90s in the midwest, I can look back and see how my optics have transitioned on gay people. I was never hateful, but I definitely had and aversion. I don't think it was a conscious decision necessarily to change but just being exposed to more demographics once I moved out of my small town and the normalization of it in media naturally changed my perception. When guys kissed on TV before it was kind of jarring and 'wrong'. Now I get happy when I see same sex couples irl and on TV.

I'm not a fan of PDA in general, but for many years now it's no different who's smooching who.

I think that the more normalized it gets, the less people will care even in the most bigoted places. Eventually everyone will personally know someone that is gay or trans, and it will just stop mattering to them as they realize their just people. I wish it were faster, but it wasn't so long ago that same sex marriage was legalized and there's been a lot of positive change and acceptance. Generational bias takes a long time to change out.

They’re just not invited to my property.

I can weirdly live and let live with that.

For me, that's too close to the way Christian Nationalists in my state of Arkansas want to exclude non-Whites, and I think would bring back suntown towns where the (often democratic) government of an locality (violently) excluded a marginalized minority from "their property".

I have to live with that attitude around here, but I'm not directly threatened by it as a cis, white male. My county voted 90% R yesterday. I know politics is the wrong place to change hearts, but I hate that my state government has regulations in place that make things less safe for trans persons and cis women.

You can’t just call those “glaring flaws” when it has a proven track record in the real world.

I have no interest in making third parties viable. I see the governance failures of parliamentary systems that fail to form majority governments and spend all their energy fighting each other instead of improving the lives of their citizens, and I don't want that here.

What I hope for from RCV are 1)making the major parties more representative, by providing high-quality information on what single-issue parties are appealing to voters. Currently parties do polling and focus groups, but these are by nature small samples that can be misleading, and a full-voter sample would be hugely valuable in guiding party strategy in the way voters want. And 2)reduce negativity in campaigns, and hopefully bleeding over into less negativity in governance. The whole campaign ecosystem is intensely negative because it works for winning FPTP. Creating a structural incentive to have some positivity - making second choices count - has the potential to encourage bipartisan work (who wants to co-sponsor a bill with someone who media blitzed horrendous lies about you and your family?) and ultimately make government work better for the people.

I remember that!