Could you go out someone who was politically opposite you?

I'm not a hunter as such but I've killed fish/birds and advocate certain types of hunting (mainly for population control) yet I only eat poultry and fish as I don't feel comfortable with the idea of having mammals slaughtered. I'm also passionately pro-sustainability but see the merits in certain facets of globalisation! Unpick that contradictory mess! hehe

What about someone who was spiritual but not religious e.g. a Jesu-moralist agnostic quasi-spiritualist

Yeah I could. I use a very strange system I have devised to find out if I could get along with others. It's called 'The Pub Test'.

Basically, if you can talk to each other and get along fine in a pub and agree(mostly) upon the things you talk about, then you could go out together.

Things like politics and religion, while very interesting, are not things you would mention in a pub. These views are often deep-set and you are unlikely to change each others mind, only causing conflict. I find it's best to focus on your similarities and not worry about your differences.

The only way politics would ever be a problem if they were really preachy and had a problem with you about it. As long as you can see past those differences and be at peace with them, then it's no problem.

I think you speak a lot of truth here.
Although I think the pub test could be applied to more than just relationships.
One of my friends is a committed Marxist, but I still get on with him. We all poke fun at him and his beliefs every now and then, but not in a malicious way. Similarly, I can get on with people from the far right without too much of a problem (although in a university there are far fewer far righters than far lefters!). I suppose it helps that they would see me as being 'racially pure' etc while I believe that there really isn't much of a place for hatred against someone because of their beliefs. Perhaps for their actions which are dictated by belief, but not solely because they believe something different to me.

I'm not a hunter as such but I've killed fish/birds and advocate certain types of hunting (mainly for population control) yet I only eat poultry and fish as I don't feel comfortable with the idea of having mammals slaughtered. I'm also passionately pro-sustainability but see the merits in certain facets of globalisation! Unpick that contradictory mess! hehe

The idealism that (realist types believe) underpins liberalism/libertarianism peut etre?

I know what he's talking about.. I don't mind naive pretty young things holding charming views such as your own, in-fact I would find them holding extreme views to the contrary rather ugly.. but I would find it hard to get my head around someone truly intelligent/educated believing in blanket laissez faire-ism in 2011

Hummm, not exactly political views, but as everything ends up in politcs anyhow...
I'm a vegetarian. I would never date, for example, a hunter or someone perfectly capable of hurting or killing animals without any sense of compassion or even worries about the planet. I could date someone who ate meat if they tried to understand my beliefs and not deliberately do something that would completly go against it. But if they ate meat there were doing something that would. So I'm confused. I hope London is a nice resource of vegetarian, intelligent guys so I don't have to think this much about it.



I don't think I could date someone religious at all. I sound much more radical than what I though I was. None of my friends are religious, mainly because in Portugal you don't have as much as a multicultural background as there is in the UK, for example. Here you have a lot of christian , adult people that came from smaller towns in the interior of the country, where the religious traditions can be found more often. In the city I would say, among young people, 90% have either a strong atheist position or don't care that much about religion at all. In my class, for instance, of almost 30 people, none of them are religious. Some of them have parents who are but understand their position. But again, I study in the city, so maybe I'm just analyzing the small world I'm in.

I'm a very pragmatic person and while I'm not super radical (I understand why people follow certain traditions and ideologies, just can't be a part of that because I don't believe the reasons that are behind), I don't think I'll be able to be with someone connected to any kind of religion. I think I'll be super boring and start asking all kinds of questions, and then get angry and then ruin everything.

I'm sorry for any mistakes, I'm typing quite fast, and I'm late. I just wanted to say this before I forget everything.

Well tbh, if Oswy were a girl then I wouldn't.