TABITHA: I recently reread Pilar’s post about her reaction to the election results. It made me think about boundaries in friendships, particularly in the context of one friend voting for Donald Trump while the other could not comprehend remaining friends with someone who supported putting a sexual predator in the White House. Over the past decade, I have established my own boundaries regarding friends and family whose values lead them to enthusiastically support Trump. However, Pilar’s post prompted me to consider other aspects of his supporters, especially women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints community, that I find difficult to understand.
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The Value Difference Between Trump Voters and Non-Trump Voters and Why It Matters
DEBORAH: I’m writing this on January 7, 2025. Four years and a day ago, I stared at my television all day, watching the events of January 6th, 2021 erupt at the U.S. Capitol. One day ago, I watched Kamala Harris, the candidate I voted for, peacefully certify the 2024 electoral college results in favor of the man who defeated her. As I watched her fulfill her duty as vice president, I thought of a woman I’ve known most of my life, someone who is in her 80s and helped plan my wedding day nearly 40 years ago. From 2016 on, she has pledged her life to the MAGA agenda. Shortly after this past November’s election, I found her clutching her proverbial pearls and looking ahead with grave concern to Jan. 6th. 2025–to yesterday. She felt certain that “the she-devil and her cohorts on the left” were plotting to overturn the election “again” by refusing to certify the results. It was too much for me and I replied, “No, that’s what your side does.” For that I was unfriended and blocked, something I find sadly amusing in light of a more recent conversation I had with another Republican woman, this time in my LDS congregation, about a month after the election. In tears, she asked if I would intercede with a mutual acquaintance, a lifelong Democrat who had told my emotionally fraught friend that she didn’t think their decades-long friendship could continue because her Trump vote demonstrated a clear difference in their value systems.
The woman had been flabbergasted. “How could she say our values are different?” she exclaimed. “She’s known me for decades!”
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Sisters Quorum 