On the night of the second presidential debate in early October 2016, our neighbor was mowing our acreage in rural North Carolina as he’s done since we moved here from Brooklyn, New York, in 2013. Just as I started an evening walk with our dogs, he cut the engine. 

“Annie, what did you think about what Trump said?” 

My neighbor was referring to Trump’s grab-em-by-the-pussy-you-can-do-anything comments captured in an Access Hollywood video made public by The Washington Post right before that second debate. 

Maybe, I thought, I had my neighbor wrong. I assumed he was a Trump supporter because, well, most people in my county are. In fact, 77% would go on to vote for Trump the following month. 

That my neighbor was asking my opinion made me think that perhaps he held mine.

He didn’t. 

While I found Trump’s comments reprehensible, my neighbor chalked them up to locker room talk. I walked the dogs; he mowed the yard. When I got back, we talked for over a half hour. I didn’t sugarcoat my response to Trump’s comments, but I also didn’t try and change my neighbor’s mind—nor did he try and change mine. He even thanked me for telling him I was voting for Hillary Clinton. He didn’t know anyone else who would.

“I still love ya anyway,” he said before driving his mower home to watch that 2016 debate.

And I love him.

Here’s what I know about my neighbor. He loves his wife and daughter fiercely. When our dogs triggered our house alarm just after we left home one day, he called before the alarm company did and was waiting in our driveway when we got home. 

After buying 22 acres behind their property, he told us we could walk there anytime. He even mows a wide swath around the perimeter so we don’t have to walk in long grass. (Did I mention we’re talking 22 acres?). 

The land had always been for deer hunters, but when his wife said no more, he converted a monstrous deer-hunting stand into “a stand for nature.” 

“It would be a great place for you to write,” he said. 

His wife, also a Trump supporter, has paid thousands of dollars to spay and neuter and otherwise care for numerous stray cats and dogs. When my wife and I found a skinny and sickly mama cat and four kittens, his wife was the first person I called. She answered and helped—then and many times since. 

And, yes, my neighbors know I have a wife, who also happens to be Black. We’re invited to cookouts, their 25^th anniversary celebration, their daughter’s 22^nd birthday party. My wife is the only person of color and, best I can tell, we’re the only same-sex couple at these events. 

I don’t think my neighbor and I have talked politics since that October evening in 2016, but our politics are no secret. We’re connected on Facebook, after all. Before the first Trump-Biden debate, my neighbor posted a photo of himself wearing a red MAGA hat. I posted one of me wearing a Biden-Harris T-shirt and holding a Biden-Harris cup.

We didn’t unfriend one another. 

Throughout that first debate, I posted on Facebook. Like many people, I found it maddening and called it a shit show and said that and more in my posts. But the next morning, I took them all down, not wanting to add to the negativity, hate and anger that is consuming so many of us. 

I added a new post that read in part:

“I mostly feel sad that we’ve come to a point where these are our options for president, that people still support Donald Trump after all that’s come to light, that Joe Biden called the president a clown and told him to shut up. 

There was nothing presidential about last night. It was not a debate. 

I’m concerned that our president can’t, without hesitation, denounce white supremacy, that an extremist group has a new motto delivered to them by our president. 

I know and love people who support Donald Trump. I love them. I still love them. I won’t stop loving them because they think he’s great. I don’t understand – not one bit – but they also don’t understand why I’m voting for Joe Biden, why I don’t think Trump is great. 

As far as I know they still love me. 

I miss civil discourse. I hate the divisiveness that penetrates our country. I want to vote for someone – not against someone. 

I’m genuinely worried about what will happen after election day, no matter how it goes.”

After reading my post, a friend from my native Iowa commented that she couldn’t love any family or friends who approve of Trump.

“You’re a better person than me,” she wrote. 

“I refuse to love misogynists, racists, homophobes and other bigots,” another friend wrote. “If you can’t defend the rights of others, be on your way.”

Unless they’re really good at hiding it, my neighbors, siblings, friends and family who support Trump aren’t misogynists, racists, homophobes and bigots.

Just like all Blacks aren’t… all whites aren’t… all Muslims aren’t … all Jews aren’t… all gay people aren’t… all straight people aren’t…

As for being a better person? My good god I’m not. What I am is unwilling to turn away from people I love because they happen to support someone I can’t. 

“I am way less concerned with who you vote for than I am with how you treat the people that vote differently than you do.”

My neighbor’s wife posted that one. 

I couldn’t agree more.