What is an issue you have completely changed your mind on?

What do you have against gay ducks?

Cilantro. I used to be 1000% against it, loathed it, despised it, the smell made me ill, the taste made me want to commit suicide, it tasted like soap, yuck, blah, poooey! Now? I like it. I often crave it. I’ve tried growing some this summer. But it has to be put ON something, the finishing touch. Still not crazy about the smell, or the taste of cilantro all alone.

Israel. Used to be totally in Israel’s corner. Practically wept with joy when Sadat came to Jerusalem in 1977. Then after that resulted in the Camp David accords the next year and Israel no longer needed to fear invasion from all sides, Begin’s government responded by…authorizing settlements in the West Bank.

And subsequent governments continued adding to the settlements and highways connecting them with each other and Israel proper, and checkpoints for the Palestinians every time they needed to cross part of the Israeli spiderweb in the West Bank, and yanno, after awhile I wasn’t so fond of Israel anymore. And it’s kept on going downhill from there.

Gun control: I used to think nobody should be allowed to own one. Now I think everybody should be required to own one.

Anarchism: Used to think it could work. Now, nuh uh.

Anal sex: Used to think it might feel good. Now, I shudder still.

After life: Used to think it was a given. Now, I might as well have believed in the tooth fairy.

Tooth Fairy: Then, I got 25 cents!! Now, my parents were cheapskates.

Self expression: Then, listen to me, this is important. Now, why bother.

(FWIW, I still hold out hope for anal sex. Next time I’ll try more lube :))

Bedroom tax. A great idea, but there isn’t the social housing stock to make it work: you can’t downsize if there’s nowhere to downsize to. Plus the necessities of the sick often needing a room to store the medical equipment because our rooms are rather small.

I used to be incredibly judgmental of people who were poor due to making the same stupid choices over and over again. After a lot of research (and just living more of life), I don’t think that way anymore.

I was gung-ho about capital punishment until I learned that 1) it’s more expensive to execute than to incarcerate someone for life, and 2) innocent people have been executed. Even one innocent execution is higher than the 0% margin of error I’m comfortable with.

I’ve been pro-gay as long as I can remember. But I don’t really take credit for it. It’s because I’m relatively young, and I had a lot of gay friends starting in middle school (I was in band, we hung out with the theatre crowd).

I was anti-abortion and an old earth creationist. Currently I am pro-choice, based mostly on Exodus 21:22-25, and a theistic evolutionist, based on the mountains and mountains of evidence in favor of the theory of evolution, and the absence of any evidence in favor of creationism.

Anti-abortion creationists challenged me to actually examine the evidence. So I did. :slight_smile:

Regards,
Shodan

I never had any issue with gay people but I used to think that Civil Unions were fine if not better because they did the same job as marriage and were more politically feasible. I thought the movement for gay marriage was counter productive and maybe silly. Then my husband said “well if its all about utility what’s wrong with the back of the bus? gets you there same as the front” and I realized all in an instant that there is nothing ok about treating anyone like a second class citizen.

Hmm, let’s see…

[ul]
[li]Nuclear power.[/li][li]Whether paying for a hair cut is worth it, flipped more than once.[/li][li]Many forms of gun control.[/li][li]Whether class or race is the bigger driver of American social pathologies.[/li][li]Carbon taxes.[/li][li]Animal rights, flipped more than once.[/li][li]Free trade as currently carried out.[/li][li]Whether Buffy is actually a good show or not.[/li][li]Recycling.[/li][li]Rap music.[/li][/ul]

I assure you, I have all of the correct opinions on these subjects now.

Whether the Israeli/Palestine situation is a form of Apartheid. I no longer think it’s a helpful comparison.
Gun control. I’m now for it.
Fur - I used to be very much against any use of animal furs in clothing. Now, I think it’s all OK, as long as it’s overseen the way raising meat animals properly should be.

The Jeffery Curley murder in MA flipped me on the death penalty. Though I STILL believe the state must pay for DNA testing.

Abortion… I was pro-choice before I had my own kids.
Religion… I was a Christian until I slowly turned atheist over a span of several years starting around the age of 15 or so.

My son playing football (American style).

I used to think “OF COURSE my son will play football!”

As an offensive lineman for nearly my entire football career, seeing how some players have debilitating injuries that manifest themselves later in life, I can’t see myself actively encouraging him to play the sport. I’ll be glad to give advice if he decides to play, but I won’t be pushing him to do so.

I now believe that the War on Drugs is responsible for more encroachments on our Constitutional rights and freedoms than both World Wars, the Red Scare, and 9/11 put together (although there is some overlap on the last one). I’m no fan of drug legalization, but now believe it is the less of evils. Only problem is that, even if they did legalize, they’d never give back the power, and we’d be left with the worst of both.

I think you just described the “generic liberal position” on guns so your opinion hasn’t really changed at all. Gun Control (99% of the time) doesn’t mean banning every single gun except in the fever dreams of Fox News.

Health care. Used to be all anti-single payer, now I think it’s the only way to go.

Repubs/Democrats. Campaigned for Newt Gingrich. Even started a grass roots campaign for Steve Forbes. Now have voted Obama twice and conservatives irritate me with their selfishness.

Rap. Didn’t like it, now I do. Especially Kanye.

National Health Care (US). Used to think it wasn’t a good idea. Still not sure that it’s a great idea in general (i.e., if no one else had it, I don’t necessarily know that it would be better to have it), but I think American consumers are getting screwed in major ways by being citizens of the only industrialized nation whose government doesn’t negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies on a national scale.

Breast feeding. My own mother put the notion into my head that it was gross and being bottle fed was just as good. After research, I have to disagree.

Don’t know if this counts, but I was a believing Christian as a kid, but around 13 or so I realized it was all myths and fairy tales.

Also, homosexuality. As a kid, like my peers, calling someone gay or a fag was like the worst insult. Hard to say when and how that changed, maybe it was simply maturity.

I do recall an incident when I was in my 20s, and hence old enough to not use childhood as an excuse, when I didn’t introduce myself to a gay guy that transferred to our site. And I even had talked to him on the phone several times previously, when he was at the other site, so it was terribly rude of me. But over the years he became a pretty good “work friend”, and he’s one of the few I keep in touch with via Facebook. I still cringe when I think of my shameful attitude from those days.

I thought it was a waste that we had Desert Storm but stopped at gaining back the oil for a bunch of over privileged Kuwaities and didn’t go to Baghdad to remove that thug Saddam Hussein.
But a few years into the Clinton administration I felt something needed to be done about Hussein but I was glad we didn’t have a huge occupying force over there. With Iran and so many radicals in the region, it’s possible that upsetting Iraq could turn into problems we wouldn’t get out of for a decade. Maybe old H. W. showed some wisdom by not imposing our will there.
But, you know. Never mind.