Lifestyle and Politics

Yay!  More questions from an anonymous reader!  Thank you!

 I've got some questions for both of you:

1. Are you Republicans or Democrats and do you always vote the same?

We are both Democrats, and we generally do vote the same.  This time he has told me who I'm voting for, but I would have picked the same candidate anyway.  There might be some small differences on the local elections, but I nearly always vote Democrat as does he.  We discuss a lot of the issues on a regular basis. He is slightly more fiscally conservative than me, but on the social issues we have both always been lefties.   Gun control is one issue that we don't line up with the far left though, as he believes the second amendment does actually give Americans the right to have guns.  That doesn't mean there can't be licensing and registration.  I used to be anti-gun in the extreme, growing up in a big city where gun violence was a frightening thing, but have changed my mind over the years to agree with him :).  We don't believe in animal rights either.  Animal welfare, treating them as well as possible, I support that all the way, but animals don't have rights.  Pro hunting, pro animal research for human benefit and pro meat eating.  Ok, we're not that far to the left. :) But we did support Obama.

Are you pro-life or pro-choice?

Pro-choice- both of us have always been.

2. Are you religious?

That's a more complicated one.  He's always been an atheist, getting kicked out of Sunday school for saying he didn't believe in God when he was 10 or so (and his dad is a minister- they still get along though, even with much religious discussion going on- Master loves a good debate).   
I started out believing the same, but in about 2008 I had a very personal and vivid experience which made me start believing in God (no drugs were involved, nor foxholes).  I don't have a religion that I follow, but I do believe there is some kind of higher power that spoke to me.  My prayers get mixed up with God and Master sometimes... 


3. What's your heritage?

I'm an American WASP mutt.  My grandma was into genealogy, so she traced our family tree and shared it with everyone.  It is English on her side and Swedish on Grandpa's.  She was also a member of the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) though not nearly as closed minded and some of them can be.  She was from Texas.  Grandpa and Grandma owned a large farm in Oklahoma until they died, and they were quite prominent people in those small circles.  I spent many summers with them on the windswept plains, feeding cows and playing in piles of cotton seeds, and developing a horror of grasshoppers landing in my armpit.   Their little sticky feet- ewwww!  

My other Grandparents were also from Oklahoma.  That side of the family had many nationalities behind it: French, Scots-Irish, English, probably some others.
My parents met in college and got married three months later, then immediately moved to England, where they lived for three years, working at Oxford, before coming back to the US and having me.   They were both in scientific fields (chemistry/biochemistry) but my mom always dreamed of being a farmer and having horses.  

My dad dreamed of never being on a farm or having to work that hard again, having grown up hoeing cotton and falling off very cranky horses.   That is what kind of mismatched expectations a three month dating/engagement period will get you!  However, they compromised by living in the city for the first 20 years and then on a farm for the next 20 and counting. 

Master's dad grew up on a farm in North Dakota, one of about 20 siblings, all boys but one, all sharing one bedroom in a little farmhouse (Ok, I exaggerated.  Only a little), of Danish and Norwegian ancestory.  We took a trip once with a dozen or so of his relatives through Denmark and Norway to meet even more relatives, which was lots of fun.    

His mom is from Panama.  She didn't teach him much Spanish, though, just a cute little poem about a frog's fart and a few other things.