This. I love it when I engage in discussion with a person and when I don't blindly agree with everything they say, they scream that I'm violating their first amendment.

No, you should not have. Those "friends" did you a favor by showing you how shallow they were.

This is a tough one and my brain doesn't want to work right now, but I read your post and wanted to pop in to show my support. Also your dad is awesome for consistently choosing to be your dad every day. 💗

Yeah... A lot of exceptions to that rule, mainly because of how the English language developed.