So many of them. So, so many.

Maybe the only one I’ve kept perfectly intact is my belief that the golden rule is prime.

I was raised a young earth creationist, picketed abortion clinics when I was elementary school aged but don’t worry I was home schooled from kindergarten through high school. Was basically a republican/libertarian until about 2015 when my spiritual leaders, including and especially my parents, began to compromise all of their values.

More recently, probably even until 2020, I viewed myself as an aspiring centrist.

Now I’m an agnostic atheist who is seeing how far left the political spectrum goes, and I still think centrism is a nice idea, in a totally different world than the one we live in, with a totally different meaning to “center”.

Here is the thing I should disclose though, because I suspect it applies to a lot of things.

I was raised steeped in a level of bigotry that was all-encompassing but cloaked in Christian love.

I have intellectually separated myself from that bigotry, but I believe I still have instinctive/subconscious/unidentified bigotries to work through.

I am trying to be very conscious of that as I make my way in the world, trying to love my neighbor as myself, and trying to continuously expand the definition of “neighbor”.

Edit: I also cut my parents out of my life entirely around the time DOGE sent their “fork in the road” email.