Meat and other sins

(Edited for news link and typos.)

Right now I'm thinking about "sin", for lack of a better word. How in America, food has become a measure of "sin" or "virtue." L'Ailee can't *stand* that. She doesn't want to hear anyone talk about being "bad" or "good" because they ate or didn't eat something, and the use of terms like "sinful" to describe a dessert drives her nuts. I guess she hears enough of that talk working in her gym, but I do from my co-workers in an office, too.

The thing that irritates me about activist right-wing Christians (I'd say other religions, too, if they had as much influence on American politics) isn't that they have convictions or try to live by them. It's when they feel the need to re-order the whole world in a way that is in line with their convictions. When they need to, as I have said so often, "make me live by your beliefs." They don't want to be "tempted" by certain things, or have other people "tempted", so they want the temptations removed. An extreme example of that just got arrested in Tennessee.

I think that the irritation people like that cause leads to the irritation vegetarians get from meat-eaters. Like my beloved pandas, I eat vegetarian the vast majority of the time, with meat once in a blue moon. (And like the pandas, I'm a *chubby* mostly-vegetarian, but hopefully my round face is as cute as theirs!) I don't even say anything about it--that Back Yard Burger or bowl of shrimp pasta I need every three months or so keeps me from using the label, as it should. But it comes out. People notice that I bring in lunches like beans and greens rolled in a tortilla and ask the waiter for no bacon after a while. And then they get guarded, like they expect me to hammer them about their hamburger. I have no intention of it. But others who eat the way I do most of the time have done it to them, and it hurt. I just smile and say, "You should see what my family history's like!" or something like that. It happened again today. I got counter-attacked at lunch when there was no attack. Too much stress for something that's supposed to enhance life and make people feel good, I think.

I wonder if maybe Jaded and Cats and the other Christians I regularly correspond with, not to mention most of the Christians I know in NYC, feel the way I did at lunch this afternoon.

Sodas were taken out of school this week. They're dangerous. They'll make kids obese. Bill Clinton, who obviously struggles with his weight, had a lot to do with it. I wonder what temptations he would prefer were taken out of this world, and how much he wants a Big Governmental Daddy to do his self-controlling for him. The anti-soda, anti-sugar rhetoric sounds a lot like right-wing book-banning rhetoric to me. That's always "for the children," too. And "for the children" is nothing but a camel's nose in the tent. "For the children" is code for "let's eventually treat our fellow citizens like children, too."

I wonder if we humans as a race will ever major on the majors and minor on the minors. I wonder if we'll ever just content ourselves with living by our own principles and not trying to make others live by them, too. I'd like to see it.

And now it's link time!

Cool recipe-filled blogs for judgmental vegetarians and those who sometimes eat like them: Nava Atlas' VeggieTalk and The Vegan Lunchbox. The second one is a mother's attempts to give her son vegan lunches he'll enjoy and eat, that aren't too "weird". But some of us pack lunches for ourselves, too!

An excellent article on all the "wreckiness" of NASCAR that begins fantastically: "Why are there so many wrecks in NASCAR? Maybe because there are fewer fistfights." Extensive quoting of Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick, who would know.

Dilbert office awards

Finally, a book I need--Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy