Opposing Views

Returning to the character series (meaning you can comment to win at the end of this blog), I wanted to talk about someone whose view points diverge dramatically from my own. It is all too easy to let all of my characters become a mouthpiece for my own position or to be flat straw dummy caricatures of the "enemy". (For exemplars of this approach to fiction, just watch the political conventions this year.)
Unlike past character series, I'm not going to give her name. She most closely corresponds to the witch Marianne out of Two Wizard Roulette, though there are pieces of her in Duchess Deluce as well. For purposes of this, I'll call her Mare.
Our differing views start at the issue of witchcraft. For her, it's a sacred religion. I really do gravitate somewhere between Catholic and Messianic Judaism depending on the day, with a Buddhist tint. When I first met her, I was wrestling with a lot of ideas about where I stood with regards to the fundamentalist evangelical church I was raised in. I knew that wasn't what I believed in, but I had rebelled enough that I felt like some of it was worth saving, if I could just trim out the junk that got tied in with it. (To whit, there are good reasons for abortion to be legal, sexuality is not a disqualification from God's love, and God is bigger and more inclusive than any one particular denomination.)
Her approach to life was pretty different. She was married, in a polyamorous marriage, deeply committed to paganism, and equally deeply opposed to anything to do with Christianity. What struck me about her was that we could talk regardless of our differences. Sometimes we stuck to safe topics, like our love for Silence of the Lambs. Other times we delved into deeper waters like the nature of magic or how she was raped by her youth pastor at a very young age. (If I have any magic in me at all, it is the ability to extract someone's deepest darkest secrets with minimal effort.)
She introduced me to Robert Heinlein and it continues to mystify how two such different people could find solace in a very outspokenly political author (He is counted among the conservatives, but his positions range from Libertarian to Democratic Socialist.) Her influence continues to work its spell on me and I likely landed in urban fantasy, rather than high fantasy, as part of her effect. I also owe my knowledge of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to her, as in the days before Netflix, she was kind enough to loan me her VHS tapes of the entire series.
I think the thing I learned from her more than anything else was that love and positive regard for another human being does not depend on agreeing with them on every single point. Sometimes the best friendships come from understanding our differences and respecting them without trying to force them to be just like us.