Have been taught to hate by brainwashing media empires

With oligarchs atop laughing all the way to the bank.
Having spent considerable time hiding from potentially lethal American heterosexism of the 1970's under a freeway bridge
I've never been able to adjust to the rose colored glasses.

Okay. I like Hillary. I despise the Donald with every fiber of my being.

I murdered the television long, long ago. I've tuned to it's bile laden vomitus from time to time when company housing came with the beast. My ears pricked up to hear a long lost (now a die-hard republicon) relative's directive to listen to George Carlin's "illusion of choice" routine: "It's a big club and you ain't in it"... and marvel magnanimously at how Faux Noize and his predisposition for racism has turned my childhood playmate into another of capitalism's puppets.
He laughed yet dismissed it as a comedic show.
My refuge from bullying under a freeway bridge became my perspective. A large, discarded cardboard box that temporarily housed a new refrigerator for a suburban household became my temporary home. The view of a family through their front window sitting down to thanksgiving dinner together made me wonder why my own had banished me to starvation and dumpster diving. On the bus I'd managed to slip in the back door to ride to the beach showers, one of the middle aged passengers who moved away from me asked me if I'd "had all my shots". I could only be astonished with disbelief as the U.S. public elected a cowboy actor to the highest office, and continue to scrounge for enough aluminum cans to afford a package of cheap hot dogs. Only the kindness of an elderly fellow gay American salvaged me from the choice of street cretin existence or the prospect of returning to uncaring, judgmental, abusive, pseudo-religious and murdersome parents.
Only after an uncle begrudgingly took me in two years later was I able to attend college and make something of myself.
My perspective remains. I cannot adopt the pretentiousness and snobbishness I came to loathe as a societal reject: for being honest with myself and others.
In Bernie I could see a glimmer of hope from an establishment politician. I can see a veneer of this with the Clintons, and certainly a far cry better chance of salvaging a retirement that hopefully won't resemble my latter teenage.
Yet I remain so far removed from the royalty our government has become I've never had a real "seat at the dinner table", aside from any conventional table to consume from. At least someone there has had a smattering of empathy, has acknowledged the disadvantaged aside from moral judgementalism, has brought into the national conversation the plight of those struggling to dig out from enormous student debts.
The Donald I can only see American pretentiousness, pernicious, exclusive, racist and judgemental, a shadow of my own father who attempted to trick me to an electrical death trap. I cringe at his $100,000 donation to those who would like to imprison me and other LGBT citizens into death camps. I cannot even begin to express this dismay at those who cannot evolve beyond their hatreds.

Can we recruit Sheldon's mom in the sky to get the word out about Bernie?

"Religious Freedom" my ass. Charlotte mayoral candidate proposes jailing all gays.

Inspired by the faux persecution complex publicly heralded by the religious right, a Charlotte, N.C. area mayoral candidate is now actually running on a platform of imprisoning all gays. Read it and facepalm:
http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2015/09/mayoral-canddidate-inspired-by-kim-davis-vows-to-eradicate-gays-by-throwing-them-all-in-jail/
I am sick and tired of the layer cake of bullshit this ilk is perpetuating. "Religious Freedom" to restrict the freedoms and pursuit of happiness of an entire demographic they just happen to disagree with just makes me ill.
Oh, yes, they're so damn persecuted they are jailed, beaten, hospitalized, brutally bullied, denied housing, jobs, love and understanding, tied to fences beaten and left to die overnight, these, poor, poor American Christians....
Er, wait a minute... I tinks me may habba-gotten something backwards there.
My hackles just raise up from my PTSD layer-cake about this one. I'm the teenage runaway from an extraordinary bullying situation and parental abuse and neglect. I dumpster-dived, did odd jobs, even street-walked my body for a living thanks to those who are displaying how terribly persecuted they are. I survived a brutal anti-gay hate crime 5 years ago involving and extended hospital stay and multiple surgeries to correct boot-inflicted facial fractures only after a vehicular assault to render me largely unconscious to begin with. As it was before the ACA, and my medical insurance pulled a dirty trick to discontinue my coverage related to my injuries (now illegal, btw), I lost my home, a classic car and all my retirement savings to pay off extensive my medical bills. I have directly been denied housing, unjustly dismissed from two job positions by new "christian" managements who cleansed their departments of us horrible LGBT. I still have nightmares of how long, when I was young teenager that "fucking faggot" replaced my name. Yet it is just this so called "christian" ilk that many a member has and still is advocating rights restriction to outright brutal acts of violence against LGBT. What a crock.
To this kownty klerk and all the religious right ilk displaying their faux persecution complex... the likes can take their fake morality and all the evil it has produced and shove it right up their fat pretentious asses.
And that's all I got's to say about that.

About 14. But it was an extended hair-rasing realization, at first, for me.

My older brothers realized my preferences long before I acknowledged such. I wish they'd given me more (information, courage), but being preoccupied with their own adolescent conundri, I was on my own.
Here was the real shocker to me. Over 2 years I was coming to the realization I was homosexual. This was the early 1970's in a very small, isolated and backwards western cowtown. The only resources available in our school library were published in the 1950's (not unusual, the local population had voted down any education-related funding, ordinances, support for years. our building were overcrowded and resources so old and useless it was ridiculous) and... listed "homosexuality" as a disorder to be treated, hospitalized, electrocuted, shunned, oh my fucking ghod.
I kept my deep, dark secret to myself for 2 years. Some of the materials I had read referred to homosexuality as a "stage" towards heterosexuality. So I kept waiting for the "change" to come around, that never came.
I know I was 14 when I finally mustered up the courage to talk to someone about it. One of my older, occasional babysitters, Debra, was a "hippie", and very open-minded. She enlightened me to a few things, that at least I wasn't alone, that there was a great movement for homosexuals to live openly that started with some riot in NYC, but... she still damaged me with "It's probably a phase you'll grow out of".
The same year, I made a mistake. Oh, I made a horribly miscalculated trust mistake. I told one of my closest friends (suddenly my nemesis after) that when I grew up I didn't want to marry a woman, I wanted to marry another man.
My life went straight to shit. The next two years were sheer hell until I ran away from the bullying. I even had an ugly encounter with the master of hate himself, Fred Phelps, whose extended relatives lived in our town. They held a "hate fest" in my honor, a trick: invited me to "party" at their house that I quickly realized was an ugly ritual "send my soul to hell" gathering. There was no outreach, no love, nothing but the ugliest man I've ever seen in my life spitting and screaming in my face. Needless to say I didn't hang around for this long.
But the bullying from all peers escalated on the Phelp's families fanning the flames. No one, not my parents, no faculty, no authority lifted a finger to protect me. My mother's words in response to her attitude change towards me: "Love you? I don't even like you anymore". Between that and all that I knew was one odd factoid Debra had told me 2 years earlier: something about San Francisco being a refuge for homosexuals.
After a few trial runaways to local friends, to come back home to no better conditions each time and winter coming on fall of 1976, I'd had it. I packed up a large backpack with all the clothes and food I could steal and was gone before morning. It was snowing, but I got rides all the way there.
Coming out can be a very convoluted process. I will tell you I very nearly ended my life hanging from a freeway overpass one night I spent under one with all the PTSD in my head from my rough adolescence. I had very little contact with my parents until many years later when my other half attempted a forced reconciliation, a hair raising surprise to find out he'd flown my parents out to visit just before I graduated from college. He was sorry he did that. And I'm afraid my coming out was not pleasant for either side of the equation. I lambasted them up one side and down the other until my mother was in tears and my dad took her to a motel room.
I explained to Eldon that I appreciated what he'd attempted, but he realized himself this wasn't going to turn into the happy family reunion he'd planned.
I can't change the past. I have to swallow and just live with the PTSD nightmares of it all which even nearly 40 years later sometimes still haunt me. If I could sue every last idiot who made my coming-of-age into a nightmare I'd leave them every bit as devastated as I was as a turnabout fair play. The list of defendents in the case would be quite long. But I assure you I have thought about class-action towards the Phelps bunch. I've thought about it a lot. It makes me wonder how many other young lives have been wrecking-balled by their hateful "ministry".
Sorry for the long explanation, the whole thing is a novel in the works with lighthearted spiritual details mixed in. Had my circumstances been different, I'd have busted out of that scary closet at 14. I cringe that there are still the likes of this dipshit county clerk attempting to demonize gays.
I am so happy to see this day when our president himself said: "It gets better". I'm shouting from the rooftops inside that we got our day in court to no longer accept second-class citizenship. I keep the ugly angry monster who wants vengeance in check.

The thing that doubly burns my ass about ignorant statements like that

Is that loyal republidiots will mindlessly clap at even the most inane of statements such as this, convinced that their hero will save them from the hoardes of welfare-queens Fox Noize has convinced them all are "the problem". Observations of the troglodyte-consumer class during my recent foray into a midwestern region of the country where the Tea Party sort I encountered in abundance revealed that they simply don't possess the mental capacity to put together that republican shore-up-the-rich policies do not result in economic gains for the masses. Fox's flashy graphics and relentless sly psychological bent have them convinced that the whole country is in ruins right now despite all evidence to to the contrary, even when they are benefiting far better, can even admit that they are better off now and turn right around to blame Clinton for economic disaster under fuckstick Shrub.
The second class of ignorance that bothers me magnamously is also a ploy of republicanism. Operatives have also successfully bred such complacency or contempt of all things political under the meme of "Your vote doesn't make a difference" and "All politicians the same". I've seen this message spelled out in the lowest common intellect denominator of television programming on an occasion I was sickened by some program I was subject to unwillingly in a social situation. The same show carried the message that "college education is not necessary for success" and had a total plotline of "political involvement just makes trouble for you". This was a program aimed at Latino audiences. I was just.. wow... wtf... even not really paying attention to the idiotic show, these themes were hammered into the consumers in mesmerized attendance.
The two headed hydra of republicans is wielded with such utter disregard and actual contempt of their own constituency it is sickening. At least many of the clowns running these days have become so utterly sold on their own poisonous rhetoric they no longer even attempt to hide their imperialist browbeating.

I'm going to bite at this, having had a personal experience

with the master of hate himself Fred Phelps. My family lived in a redneck community where I got outed. I had made the mistake of telling someone I thought was a close friend, at 14 years old, that when I grew up I wanted to marry another man.
Life went straight to shit for me from that day until I ran away from that hell at 16 for my own survival.
And Fred F@cking Phelps was part of the problem. As some of his extended family lived in the town I went to school, I was "invited to a party in my honor". I smelled a rat when my Phelps friend said his uncle wanted to meet and talk to me, but curiosity killed my cat. I went at the appointed time.
It was an absolute hate-fest. A ceremony of laughter and vile, idiotic and ritualistic derogatory "condemning my soul to hell". There was nothing even remotely "christian" about this gathering, to my remote understanding of it. Just Fred spitting in my face as he yelled about my being a child of satan at the top of his lungs as the family gathered all around chimed in with holy epithets. Needless to say I made my way out the door in less than a minute.
Fred Phelp's family also saw to it that my life at that school would become unbearable from then on. I cannot even count the times that "faggot" replaced my name. I had bruises, cuts and fractures from being pushed, kicked, hit, shoved, tripped and tortured daily. And as far as everyone in that town was concerned, the "city slicker" that their parents warned them all not to associate with became the devil himself to burn.
When I finally made it all the way to San Francisco, I found a freeway bridge to sleep out of the rain, and eat the damaged package of Lorna Doone cookies I'd dug out of a dumpster on the way. I was filthy, hungry, totally alone and felt as though I was the only one in the world like me, as far as I knew. To this day I don't know what drew me to go to San Francisco, but it turned out to be my lifesaver at the kindly hands of an aged pedophile who eventually took me in.
I contemplated suicide, Freds unholy words echoing to me, convinced that perhaps the world would do better without this "faggot".
No I cannot imagine how horrible a full Phelps upbrining would be, compared to my parents who neglected my needs, the abusive part probably would have left me hanging from a rope from a freeway overpass just south of here.

I lost a job in California early 90's when corporate LGBT anti-discrimination was barely a glimmer

As well as one housing situation in late 80's Texas when a landlord made discovery of us two males inhabiting a one bedroom apartment.
More recently, and most disgustingly, was a rather blatant crusade by a new manager at a hospital I worked at in Arizona to rid our department of my gay self and one transgender individual. She succeeded, and I'll tell you why. The unapologetically greedy red streak of political Scroogery in Arizona has made draconian cuts to the EOC there. Our complaint was filed, only to get the response that only the most egregious of sexual harassment and gender pay discrepancy cases can be handled by the EOC that has been cut dramatically. They were apologetic that they could no longer protect anyone from practically anything else. I have since dropped my professional licensure in Arizona, and will never work there again until this turns around. To this day the parent corporation of that hospital, based in Memphis, Tennessee, still refuses to list LGBT as a protected class on their policies.
Texas is not the only state that will likely turn blue in a decade or so. Native Arizonans are getting really, really fed up with being shafted by these antediluvian crazies, but they have a problem with thousands of snowbirds that flock yearly to Arizona, and keep their voter registration there also so they can get to Quartzsite in time for the November "big event". It skews the whole picture far redder than it would be without them. Some elections would have swung the other way if it weren't for the retiree Fox-noise addicted hoardes that come from Idaho, Montana and the snowy likes.
And it makes me madder than hell to hear right wing f*cktards tell me my rights are not being violated. Especially when they vomit up their recent meme of "you are free to marry someone of the opposite sex just like everyone else". I used to fight this garbage on their own turf, right on their crazy red-meat sites such as Fox Nation.
Until I got banned there. Go figure...
Same town where my partner of the time and I got kicked out of our home, he went to interview at a new fast food restaurant called "Chick-Fil-A". Not only did the idiotic phonetic pronunciation of their name stand as a turn off, but my partner certainly did not spare any energy slamming the door on the way out from the interview, where he was asked personal questions about his sexuality as part of the interview process.
And the red-meat crowd wonders why we're militant.

Comments and advice welcome: Re: bringing my gay pakistani friend to the U.S.

My friend who just turned adult age in Pakistan wants out... who can blame him? The tricky balance here is he does not want any of his family to know about his preferences, that could put them in danger even in his absence. I'm bringing him here on a visitor's visa then apply for asylum. He's also coming to check out City College's engineering program for a start in college. I've already made contact with a law firm who has had success in such cases.
I think we're doing this right under the circumstances. He is so living in fear there. It's strictly a platonic interest for me, myself being partially disabled he's willing to help me manage my home so I can keep working until we can get ourselves set up to support him in school. I know he'll need to take some ESL classes part time for a year or so before starting a serious program anyway, he's got basic english down albeit a bit broken and accented.
Resources are short for me, so I've had to take this one step at a time.
I'm not giving a lot of details here. I know there are some antediluvian lurkers around this site that would love to take the wrecking ball to our lives.

Possible New and Improved Republican Presidential Contender!