Thank you for helping put my mind at ease:-). Sadly, I think there are quack doctors, especially in the USA, but as you say the entire issue is so super-charged b/c on the other side you have things like those literally torture camps where they electroshock little children, often leading to their actual death. I think multiple of the latter have been created and directed over by someone who a decade or two later in life came out as gay themselves, and one or perhaps two even killed themselves - i.e. they hated themselves, b/c of their pseudo-religious bullshit treating Christianity not as "love one another" but rather as "do as I say" aka Might Equals Right and Conformity Is All. So then hurting the children sprung forth from their own mental illness, but in the process they created a panic among parents who wanted to "beat out the gay" from their children, who they ended up killing instead:-(.

The parallels between those stories and the anti-vax movement are profound: each relates to ignorance, and each results in a huge risk and often death to the most innocent among us:-(. And THAT is why I keep saying that I am losing hope for democracy: why should "citizens" have a say, in such INORDINANTLY COMPLEX matters, that require specialist knowledge, especially when there is (often Russian-derived, intentional) misinformation polluting the whole topic?! Except how else could be done - the State (e.g. China) decides, and everyone just has to follow its lead? Which brings us back to: the only solution forward would be to ensure that people receive a basic edumacashiun, so that we are better prepared to deal with such attacks on our system(s), even as we try to move forward into the future. But Christofascists on the one side, and corporate-backed liberals on the other, do seem a daunting pair of adversaries.

How are we supposed to tell people how things actually are for us if nobody even listens to us in the first place.

Amen, sistah! That is the really odd thing I find about most aspects of life - like "Evangelical" Christianity in particular, isn't the goal there to "save" people, so then why go extremely out of your way to alienate them, via let's say passing anti-abortion laws? All that on top of the fact that the Bible not only never says that Christians are meant to regulate non-Christians, but in fact it says the polar opposite of that! Christians are to judge "Christians" - e.g. when a priest diddles a child, THAT is something that should be judged! And also, Christians are specifically never ever to judge "non-Christians", who have been granted freedom to live however they wish. The only grace I can manage to come up with for people who think like that - even though it included me for many of my early years - is that sheeple aren't known for their ability to perform acts of higher thought. They are vulnerable. As are we all, just differently, is all.:-|

That said, there really is a line there, and that is when you step up to take away the rights of other people - properly warn them, yeah, maybe go so far as to require an extra consent form or some such, but when you actively prevent someone from doing as they please, that generates resentment. How the hell are people supposed to "evangelize" to someone who has just e.g. been tortured, perhaps to literal death? (successfully anyway) It makes them a hypocrite.

The saddest part is that in reality we all want the same thing but “They” have us fighting about manufactured issues and differences that don’t actually matter at all.

I agree so hard I can't even throw in a nice phrase here about it, maybe I'll just say "gulp". Among well-meaning individuals, we can discuss ANYTHING at all, no matter how difficult, and if there's something we don't quite "get", we can look it up. Maybe put our money where our mouths are and hire an expert to explain it to us. But we can get it done. However, among people who are not well-meaning, we can discuss NOTHING, b/c every single topic is merely being used as another avenue to preach their belief at someone, not merely virtue-signalling b/c they actually do mean it (sometimes), but still not all the way over to the other side in terms of being actually authentic. They must be quite lonely I imagine, and not comfortable in their own skin/heads, to need to resort to borrowing the actual thoughts of others rather than stare bravely at their own, following wherever they may lead. Take pity on them, but don't let them be in charge!

It is not my place to tell you what to do, but I do hope that you get a chance to rest before replying to me - as much as I enjoy hearing from you, I want you to be happy even more:-).