Are you abandoning the fight if you move from a red state to a blue one?
Here’s this week’s question from a reader, condensed and edited for clarity: I’m considering moving my family from a red state to a blue state.
Key points
- Moving to a blue state could give my wife and I better nondiscrimination protections, better worker protections, and better access to health care.
- Whether you agree or disagree, they should clarify the terms in a way that makes it easier for you to decide one way or another.
- I am well aware of how the red state exodus and the red state brain drain are already affecting our community.
Given the assault on trans rights in recent years, I’d be really skeptical of anyone who tries to argue that you and your wife have a moral obligation to stay put and “fight the good fight” if she’d be happier and safer elsewhere.
However, I feel like moving would be abandoning the good fight in my home state.
Additional details
- It’s hard to weigh what may be best for my wife against what’s best for our fellow red state residents.
- One strain of thought in modern philosophy — promoted by utilitarians like Peter Singer — says that we should aim to maximize the overall good, and that means doing good impartially rather than prioritizing certain people just because they happen to be our nearest and dearest.
- I’ve lived in a red state my whole life, and as a lesbian with a wonderful trans wife, it is hard.
- Utilitarianism says you have to consider everyone’s well-being equally, with no special treatment for your own family members — but to Williams, that’s just an absurd demand.
- When you got together with your wife, you made a commitment to ensuring her well-being, over and above your general wish for all people everywhere to be well.
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