I believe there’s another way we should be looking at this dissonance. It’s with some painful humility. I have also lived a life of being quite left of center, critical of not just conservatives but moderates too, and even once a supporter of childhood medical transition because I “believed the science,” believed the treatments were well-researched and monitored, believed it was extremely rare and that doctors and therapists had done everything g possible to make sure the child was mentally well and there really was no other option. What I have now learned through very hard, humbling experience is that when you are actually living and experiencing something day in and day out - not just reading about it online, thinking about it in the abstract, or hearing the limited and edited versions of the truth people are choosing to share publicly (for a variety of their own complex reasons) - until you are actually LIVING it, your understanding of it is superficial at best, dangerously judgmental and ignorant at worst. Even before my family became pulled into this toxic gender ideology, I had a complete paradigm shifting experience with an older man whose political beliefs I saw as completely unacceptable. He privately told me about a painful, traumatic family experience that informed a lot of his politics now. Did I change my mind and adopt his politics? No. But I completely changed my view of him and why people everywhere adopt the political and cultural beliefs they do. So where do I stand now? I don’t call myself left or right, liberal or conservative, democrat or republican. I will no longer include any of those labels in my identity - frankly, I think doing so is as potentially harmful as having a “gender identity.” I will no longer accept that because I believe X about gender identity that I am obligated to believe Y about vaccines, masks, abortion, CRT, or anything else. I will look at each issue carefully and on its own merits. I will no longer make any of these the basis of who I am or feel required to believe everything else those on the same side believe on different issues. If you want to both the pain of dissonance and the extreme polarization that’s destroying l our children, our families, and our communities, this is a step we must take.