A gay man who lives in Washington State has been branded ‘a spoiled brat’ after demanding his entire family stop voting Republican and forcing his father to leave the GOP.
Ryan Short, 42, was having a conversation with his 80-year-old father Richard, a veteran who lives in Dallas, Texas.
‘We were just having one of our random catch-ups and he just casually said, ‘I’m still Republican,” Short said, with his dad reaffirming that after Ryan brought up what he sees as the GOP’s rhetoric against LGBTQ people.
The next day, he wrote an email to dozens of family members saying ‘you cannot vote for the GOP and continue to have a relationship with me. No exceptions.’
He added that ‘The safety and peace of me, my husband, and my community is baseline, non-negotiable, and unrelated to politics,’ Short wrote. ‘To vote GOP is to divide the family.’
Ryan Short (pictured left), 42, was having a conversation with his 80-year-old father Richard (pictured right), a veteran who lives in Dallas, Texas. When his father said he was a Republican, he asked his entire family to stop voting GOP
He made this request while adding that he was ‘inviting no dialogue, and I have no interest in nuance.’
Short told Insider that at 42, he didn’t want to ‘waste any more time on things that aren’t bringing light to my life.’
‘This letter was a boundary, not a persuasion,’ he added. ‘It was not intended to persuade anyone.’
He tweeted out the email, as well as a negative reaction from a family member, with it gaining over 15,000 likes.
However, not all saw it Short’s way, with one user saying ‘you’re an ungrateful disrespectful brat and I’m sure your parents regret having you after that hateful letter.’
Another called it ‘narcissistic and painful to read. I had to write a letter when younger because my family was aggressively trying to ‘un-gay’ me for several years. Would that our greatest dispute was over politics. Feels a whole generation has no idea what actual discrimination looks like.’
Short, however, has seen positives from posting the letter, noting that young people who are of various identities have been asking if they could use it themselves.
‘I was like, ‘go for it, man, like open-source that s**t! We’re only free if we’re all free.”
Short wrote this email to dozens of family members saying ‘you cannot vote for the GOP and continue to have a relationship with me. No exceptions.’
He wanted people to know that he has several LGBTQ relatives and even those that aren’t are supportive but he simply thinks that their political beliefs don’t back them up.
‘We don’t have anyone in my family that doesn’t like the queer family, or doesn’t support issues, it’s just one specific action of voting for the people that do.’
Short, whose Twitter account is currently suspended, said that he got mostly positive responses and affirmations that family members wouldn’t vote Republican any longer.
He even eventually got his father on his side, despite an initial reaction he described as given ‘quickly, without thinking.’
‘Family is family,’ Richard Short said. ‘Being a hard head, I’m a little bit hard to get through to,’ Richard Short said. ‘But then I’m one of these people, I’ll sit back, reflect and think on what I said, and I’m very quick to apologize.’
He not only agreed not to vote GOP any longer, he resigned from the Collin County Republican club he belongs to.
‘I was so worried that I had lost my son.’ Richard Short said. ‘And luckily, I have a son in Ryan who accepted my sincere, open, and honest apology.’
