{"id":5164,"date":"2015-08-07T12:53:43","date_gmt":"2015-08-07T19:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/of.jennism.com\/?p=5164"},"modified":"2015-08-07T12:53:43","modified_gmt":"2015-08-07T19:53:43","slug":"on-controversial-issues-and-people-you-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/?p=5164","title":{"rendered":"On controversial issues and people you know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;You support the death penalty?&#8221; I remarked, each word dripping with anger.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>The conversation became something else then.  Mostly because of me.  And we never talked like normal people again.  I was 19 and just began my second year in college.  He was my roommate&#8217;s friend, attended community college, and had fallen in love.  In love with my words and the way I said them eloquently in blog and through instant message.  The attraction wasn&#8217;t mutual.<\/p>\n<p>But you see, then, I didn&#8217;t know how to say things kindly to someone\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhether they hurt me or angered me. I didn&#8217;t know how to say: I need some time away.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, I found myself hunting for a contentious issue.  An issue that would divide us.  And most often the issues are the ones that Errol Louis from CNN <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2015\/08\/04\/opinions\/louis-planned-parenthood\">describes<\/a> as &#8220;a conversational dead-end, on which nearly all intelligent adults have already made up their minds.&#8221;  That is, the issues of abortion, gay marriage, or death penalty.  I swing extremely left on all of those, but as I have discovered, the world is diverse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;You support the death penalty?&#8221; I remarked, each word dripping with anger. &#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said. The conversation became something else then. Mostly because of me. And we never talked like normal people again. I was 19 and just began my &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/?p=5164\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5165,"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5164\/revisions\/5165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}