How did I get to be this way?

Grau Geist posted a blog about reading The Audacity of Hope and trying to understand our President a bit better and what made him liberal.  GG then discussed how he was inluenced to have more consevative views.
 
I thought it was a good topic and wanted to hear a brief bit about how all of you (except CJ) were influenced politically as you grew up (assuming you are, of course, grown up).
 
Here you go.  How I became a

 
As many of you know, my ancestry can be summed up in two words:  white trash.  Oddly, having been raised (excepting my mother) around alcoholics, addicts, racists, and wife beaters, I was unaffected and gave my mother very little trouble.  Bad grades were about the only thing that I ever was grounded for.  While this gave me little tolerance for people who made bad choices or women who allowed themselves to be mistreated by men (opposed to empathy), I became very uncomfortable with people who make racist remarks and hated that particular element of my family.  Even my mother, whom I love and admire a great deal, would tell you (if she felt comfortable with you, anyway) that she did/does not like the idea of a black president.  I simply can not understand that mentality.
 
I used to go to church with my aunt and uncle as a child.  The idea of a god never felt right to me and I stopped going around the seventh grade, declaring myself atheist at the age of thirteen.  While I completely respect the need people have to believe in something and somewhat envy those who have the capacity for faith, I am constitutionally unable to believe in god.
 
I was raised by two moms.  I noticed around high school, when Clinton was president, that they seemed to lean left (gay Republican is an oxymoron, I think) and was supremely disappointed a few years ago to learn that my biological mother had never voted. 
 
In all, social issues are what make me a jack ass.  I am proud of the fact that, in spite of having been raised by two women for eighteen years of my life, I had a better family life than many of my peers. 
 
I hate seeing images of people in poor countries dying of AIDS and starvation and hear my countrymen make comments like "let's take care of our own first" as if there is ANY basis for comparison.
 
I don't like living in a society where the majority of people think that, in order to have true morality, we have to have religion.
 
I believe very strongly in the public school system and, while it needs serious change, would never support anyone who tried to defeat it.
 
Etc.
 
However, having been raised in the family I was raised in, I have seen how possible it is to come from nothing and make something of yourself.  My mother is that person who could've been practically dead right now from a life of various abuse.  She was the only of her many siblings to graduate high school and go to college.  She makes a solid wage and is an example of the Dream.  For this, I can't help but see more good in Capitalism than many others like me, though I see its flaws as well.  The economy is about the only thing I lean more right on.  The stimulus makes me very uncomfortable and I sit back and wait, crossing my fingers.
 
That's all I have to say about that.
 
Oh.  I'm left handed, too.
 
Hugs.