A post in the LDS Dating — Midsingles Facebook group earlier this month asked a simple question: "Can we, or should we, pursue relationships with those who have opposing political or religious beliefs?"
39 people reacted. 348 people commented.
That ratio tells you something. When a post gets 10 times more comments than reactions, people are not scrolling past. They are stopping to argue, defend, and — if you read carefully — reveal something they may not have meant to.
The top comment, from a woman named Anita, landed clean and decisive: "Can you? Yes. Should you? No." It got 59 reactions and became the invisible thesis statement the rest of the thread argued around. A man named Chris went further, declaring he would rather date a Christian than "an evil democrat/liberal." A woman named Tamara, from the other side of the aisle, said simply: "I can't do MAGA. I just can't." Between them, they generated nearly 50 replies and enough heat to warm a chapel.
But here is the comment that stopped Scott and Laurie cold. It came from someone named Theodore, near the bottom of the thread, with very few reactions: "We're asking the wrong question. The right question is: would the person I want to date and marry be a partner that wants a forever in the kingdom of God?"
Nobody argued with Theodore. Most people scrolled past him. And that might be the most telling thing in the entire thread.
Fear Wearing a Values Costume
Scott
Let's name what is actually happening in a comment like Chris's or Tamara's, because it is worth being honest about.
When someone says "I can't date a Democrat" or "I can't do MAGA," they are not really talking about policy. Nobody falls out of love over a tax bracket. What they are saying is: I use this as a shortcut to figure out if I can trust you. And I understand that. After a long marriage that did not work, or years of dating people who turned out to be fundamentally misaligned, shortcuts feel efficient.
The problem is that shortcuts are a terrible substitute for actual discernment. Plenty of people vote exactly like you and would be a disaster to be with. Plenty of people vote differently and would show up for you in ways you have never experienced.
A preference is something you would like. A dealbreaker is something a relationship genuinely cannot survive without. Political affiliation is almost always a preference that has been promoted to dealbreaker status without actually earning it. And if you are honest with yourself about why, the answer is usually not values. It is fear. Fear of conflict. Fear of incompatibility. Fear of going through all of this again and landing in the wrong place.
That fear is real and it is valid. But a bumper sticker is not a screening tool.
Laurie
There was a moment in the thread that made me laugh out loud, and then feel a little sad. A man named Spence posted: "2 things I can't stand: 1. Intolerance. 2. Republicans."
He meant it as a joke. It landed as satire. But it also perfectly captured something that showed up over and over in that thread: people insisting, sometimes in the same sentence, that they require a tolerant partner while being completely intolerant of anyone who did not agree with them.
I want to say this as kindly as I can. If you have spent time in this community, you have probably felt the sting of being judged by people who decided they knew everything about you based on a single data point — maybe a divorce, maybe a faith struggle, maybe a question you asked out loud. That judgment hurt. And it was wrong.
So before you write off an entire category of human beings based on their voter registration, ask yourself: am I doing to them what was done to me? Because the capacity for real connection lives on the other side of that question. Not in the answer you give. In the willingness to ask it honestly.
The Moment It Gets Real
Scott
Here is where I want to give the thread some genuine credit, because not everyone was trading absolutes. A woman named Aubrey wrote something I have not been able to stop thinking about:
"What are you going to do if you want your funeral to be a certain way, but your partner doesn't share your belief system so they refuse? What about if you're feeling sad or unsure about something going on in your church or in your country and you can't vent to them because you know they're happy about it?"
That is not a hypothetical. That is a Tuesday. That is the specific texture of emotional loneliness that no amount of attraction or compatibility in other areas can fix. And she is right.
The question is not whether political or religious differences can exist in a relationship. Of course they can. The question is whether those differences create a structural problem that two reasonable adults cannot navigate. The funeral scenario is structural. The inability to grieve together, to celebrate together, to share the things that matter most — that is not a communication problem. That is a compatibility problem.
So yes. Be open-minded. And also be specific. Those two things are not in conflict.
Laurie
The kids question is where nearly every "we can make it work" comment in that thread eventually collapsed. Jamie put it plainly: "2 tolerant people can make it work — until the kids question comes up."
Baptism. Sex education. Which holidays, which rituals, whose God. These are not abstract differences. These are Tuesday afternoons for the next 18 years. And if you do not know where your partner stands on these questions before you are deeply attached, you are setting yourself up for the hardest possible version of a conversation that was never going to be easy.
This is not about compatibility checklists. It is about asking real questions early enough that the answers can actually inform your decision. Not on date 1. But not after you are already in love either. The conversation is not "what do you vote?" The conversation is: what does a home look like to you? What does raising a child look like? What do you do when you disagree about something that matters more than anything?
Those conversations are not dealbreakers. They are the whole point.
The Question Nobody Clicked On
Scott
Theodore's comment got buried. That is worth sitting with.
Here is what he said, one more time: "We're asking the wrong question. The right question is: would the person I want to date and marry be a partner that wants a forever in the kingdom of God?"
Whether or not the temple is your goal, the structure of what Theodore is doing is exactly right. He is refusing to answer a proxy question. He is going straight to the actual thing.
Most of the 348 comments in that thread were answering a proxy question. Not "can I build a life with this person?" but "does this person signal the right things from a distance?" And the reason proxy questions feel so useful is that they protect you from having to be vulnerable enough to find out the real answer.
Real screening takes longer. It requires actual conversations. It requires showing up curious instead of showing up with a checklist. It is slower and less satisfying than a clean binary. And it is the only thing that actually works.
What You Are Really Protecting
Laurie
A woman named Dianna offered a piece of historical perspective that did not get nearly enough attention: "It used to be quite common for people of different political views to marry because politics was just politics. It had nothing to do with your relationships and the respect we show each other."
She is describing something that has genuinely changed, and the change is worth naming. Politics has become identity. And when politics becomes identity, disagreeing about it feels like a personal rejection rather than a difference of opinion. Which means the stakes of dating across that line feel enormous, even when the actual policy differences might be navigable.
For people in this community especially, there is a particular danger here. Many of you spent decades using a single framework — temple worthiness, covenant faithfulness, adherence to church standards — to screen for partners. That framework gave you certainty, even when it failed you. And when that framework crumbles, it is very human to reach for a new one. A new litmus test. A new way of sorting the trustworthy from the untrustworthy before you have to actually find out.
Political alignment can become the new worthiness test. It has the same binary satisfaction. It produces the same false confidence.
The harder question — the one Theodore was reaching for — is not about party or faith at all. It is: do I feel safe with this person? Can they handle me at my most uncertain? Will they still be there when I am not easy to love?
Those questions cannot be answered from a profile. They can only be answered by showing up, staying curious, and being willing to be wrong about someone in both directions — wrong that they did not qualify, and wrong that they did.
You have already survived being wrong once. You know you can do it. The question is whether you are willing to try again with your eyes open instead of your checklist up.
And when you are ready to go deeper, we will be here.
— Scott & Laurie
Weighing in from the lowest tier of the Celestial Kingdom, where we stopped using shortcuts and started having actual conversations — and it turns out that is where all the interesting people were hiding.