How have your political views changed over time?

[TJ in Oregon]

I've drifted somewhat upward and to the left on the PM over the years after beginning as a pretty generic conservative. The main factors that have influenced my drifting were my Mom going on strike when I was in high school and a re-evaluation of my beliefs and worldview that took place my sophomore year of college. The only two major issues I've changed my mind on have been the death penalty and legalized gambling. I was a huge supporter of legalized gambling when I was younger, but later came to realize that legalizing it causes more harm in terms of broken families than good it does in development. Ironically, the two things that convinced me it was a bad idea was a friend I respect a lot that wanted it legal and a newspaper editorial in favor of it.

My view of the death penalty changed much more slowly. It was always an issue that perplexed me because the Church teaches against it and used to practice it so I dismissed the teachings against it as going soft and conforming to the post-modern values of the age. I was confronted on this a couple times and sort of threw my hands into the air and called myself "neutral" for a while on the issue. But the eventual "winner" position was that the death penalty is accpetable only when it is necessary to protect others from harm rather than an instrument of punishment, which ironed out the contradiction in my thinking as well as it could be. I also had an argument with another friend over abortion in the case of rape where I asked him if it would be okay for the woman to kill the rapist out of revenge and he told me it would be fine and is called capital punishment. That unnerved me to where I began to see capital punishment is less about public safety and more about revenge. I slowly came to realize that my belief that capital punishment is okay only when necessary for public safety meant never as it's done in sentencing in the US.