I've become more liberal. I was raised pretty conservative (my dad was Republican and a big fan of Rush Limbaugh), and got into the extreme right as a teenager - the militia & White Nationalist movements. I was also raised in a very politically conservative church and the two reinforced each other, so part of political "awakening" came through leaving religion and sorting through my own beliefs and upbringing.

Once I got out in the real world, I realized the racist part of that was stupid as hell and started examining some of my other beliefs. People I considered friends came out as gay, married and had children with people of other races, and did things I was taught were immoral, but they were still decent people. And I saw so many start struggling because of failed social support and conservative policies that pushed them further into worse situations, instead of helping them before things got so unmanageable.

Now I guess I'd me a moderate Democrat. I changed my voter registration to Democrat back in 2012, after already having changed it to unaffiliated due to increasing disillusionment with the Republican Party). At the time, my state was pushing a vote to ban gay marriage and I had decided to help organize and campaign for President Obama's re-election and certain other causes mostly-backed by Democrats locally, so I figured it was time to make it official.

In a lot of ways, I lean kind of libertarian as far as supporting freedom and deregulation of personal choices, but I realize that a lot of the societal structures and support needed to make many things a true choice actually require a strong government and centralized planning on at least state and local levels and taxation to support those plans and services.