Background: My Mother told my Dad he was not allowed to bring up politics or religion. She and my brother's wife told my brother the same thing. This is because my Dad loves to rile things up with this (knowing Karen and I do not agree with his right-wing beliefs) and my brother gets a bit aggressive and goes off like a bomb with these subjects.
Dad did pretty well, only occasionally trying to start this up, but my Mom really shut him down hard. First night there my brother, his wife, and sons came over. We do not get along with my brother for many reasons, but he is apparently trying to do better. He actually shocked us when he asked about us. First time he has ever asked us about our lives. We actually looked over at each other when he did. He occasionally mentioned a few things at the start of the night, but we were all ignoring it, trying to have a calm and pleasant night. Then Dad, out of the blue, decides to mention that he knows a guy who say (shocker) that not all Syrians are rabid murderers, and actually nice people. Um, yeah. I mention yes, in any population the majority of the people are good people, and there is only a few people who are problematic, radicals. Brother launches at that point, immediately into why the US needs to make sure to keep all Muslims out of the US, you can't trust them to not kill everyone, yada-yada. I tell him to stop, he says no. I ask him to please stop this, he says no, we are never going to stop until they are all gone. I ask one more time to please quit. He starts to ramp up, so I get up and leave the room. Apparently, His wife tells him to immediately go home. He bitches about having to leave because he pissed off his brother. In a few minutes I'm told the boys and his wife are leaving, so I go out and give hugs.
Brother apparently was so embarrassed at his actions (also a first time) that he walked home, about 7 miles. Neither he nor his wife came over the next two days, but at least the boys were allowed to, so we got to spend lots of good quality time with them. I was going to talk to my brother and at least try to encourage him to continue his improvement and growing up (he's 3 years older than me, but about 15 years behind me in growing up), but he carefully avoided any time with me alone after that. Dad got royally reamed by Mom for opening the door up for my brother.
So, fast forward to today. We got back home yesterday, Dad calls to basically tell me that he cannot believe that the Boy Scouts have opened their doors to transgender children. I told him good. He kept trying to argue stuff, but I just kept telling him that if he is trying to shock or annoy me about this, he's got the wrong son, as I agree with this decision, and neither of us were changing our minds. He was also surprised that the Girl Scouts have allowed this for some time, which I pointed out that I'm not surprised, the Girl Scouts are not so tied into religion as the BSA. After a little bit of him trying to get me to, I don't know, argue about this? he finally gives up and says goodbye.
Oh Papa. you just do not seem to learn. He really likes a good argument/fight.
