Here’s a great piece which underscores the very notion of the redefinition of things once commonly held (with a hat tip to Mark Shea).
VEGANS FOR FOOD EQUALITY
Inspired by the success of Catholics for Marriage Equality, a new group has formed: Vegans for Food Equality. Here is what they say:
After generations of silence, we Vegans are finally speaking out. We ourselves are devout believers in the virtue of fresh fruits and vegetables, but we see no reason to consider them superior to other foods.
We are ashamed that less enlightened Vegans have made disparaging remarks about deep fried chicken, corn-fed beef and creamy chocolate pies. We have family members who secretly eat those “forbidden” foods. They have been made to feel guilty when they stop for a fish taco or a Big Mac.
Now is the time to end all discrimination. One food should not be considered “better” than another.
To combat long-standing prejudice, Vegans for Food Equality will open a new Vegan restaurant in Seattle. Side by side with traditional vegan favorites, we will offer Denver omelets, chili dogs and real milk shakes.
Finally we appeal to our fellow Vegans to vote for a new law which will expand the meaning of “vegetable.” From now on vegetable will include anything you place in your mouth and swallow. This new law will not prevent old-fashioned Vegans from referring to carrots and broccoli as “vegetables.” It will simply expand the definition of vegetable to include sirloin steaks and cheddar cheese.
And as a commentator on his blog wrote:
Yeah! Just because we’ve always been ignorant, thinking in outmoded categories about vegetables, doesn’t mean we have to keep on living in the 13th century. I mean, a carrot is orange, crunchy, and tasty. And a Dorito is orange, crunchy, and tasty. In fact, I’d say a Dorito is actually a lot tastier, and those who just don’t go for the carrot taste might really become vegan if Doritos were recognized as vegetables.Who are we to say what someone else’s definition of vegetable is? Why does my vegan meal of Doritos, hot dogs, and jalapeno poppers (stuffed with delicious vegetables such as cream cheese and bacon bits), threaten your vegan meal of quinoa mixed with braised spinach and pine nuts?
I can only hope that all your readers are enlightened enough to VOTE NO for the constitutional amendment that limits veganism. That amendment was just written by haters…
Sometimes, a bit of farce is the best medicine. Jonathan Swift got that when he proposed the selling of children by the Irish as food for the English (and, to whit, most of Gulliver’s travels).
At present, people are trying to redefine marriage, reducing it to merely an arrangement of some sort of “monogaminity,” and mutual agreement between two (or, probably eventually, more) people. Anyone who speaks against this is viewed as being utterly ignorant and bigotted, trying to set the country back to the times before the civil rights movement. All of this is hogwash, but so many people are at a loss to explain WHY, without resorting to biblical citation which is, itself, not enough.
Not that there haven’t been some laudable attempts: