Fat is a Right but Gay is a Choice - Only in Ahmerica

Today a man fell victim to the American diet proudly on display at the Arizona institution, "The Heart Attack Grill," where sexy (skinny) waitresses cater to a defiant clientele with a menu that laughs in the face of nutrition. It is unapologetic in targeting a specific audience, namely the one that should never eat there in the first place. Skuttlebutt is any customer over 350lbs can eat for free.



(BTW that guy in the commercial is dead now. He didn't even make it to age 30.)

I don't know if I've ever seen a motel named after a STD, a Shoplifters Paradise retail store or found a bar that gleefully plies alcoholics with liquor.

But in our culture we can take another equally dangerous addiction with lethal consequences and make it a joke, or worse yet... a marketing tool. The owner of The Heart Attack Grill, "Doctor" Jon Basso, who used to run Jenny Craig centers btw, admits that his menu is unhealthy and has an equal share in the deaths of his obese clientele as anyone who provided junk food, but it would be "immoral" to stop. As such he's opening up new chains in other states, including Dallas. Texas counts for the 12th fattest state in our nation so I reckon it'll do very well.

As shocking as it sounds, as dire as the warnings, this man will likely continue to rake in the dough on this venture. Our "Man Vs. Food" nation will write it off as "tongue-in-cheek" and something that won't REALLY do any harm as long as people don't eat like this ALL the time.

Newsflash: if you're 570lbs you ARE eating like this ALL THE TIME. First rule of weight loss: eat fewer calories than you burn. Larger bodies naturally burn more calories so they require more food to maintain the heavier weight. A six foot man in his 30s would have to eat more than 3800 calories per day just to maintain a 350lb body.

Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? It might surprise you to know the Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing weighs in at 2900 calories (and a whopping 182 grams of fat.) The Heart Attack Grill may be a little more open about it but we're killing ourselves with food on a regular basis in many chain restaurants. They provide these high fat, high calorie dishes and drinks on the menu because they know Americans will order it no matter how bad it is for them no matter what their weight.

It's good ol' American capitalism at its finest, really. Freedom of choice meets the entrepreneurial spirit. If people want to kill themselves a bite at a time, we can't stop them. So we might as well make some money doing it. It's the deep-fried, sugar-coated American dream. These people are free to eat themselves to death and the fast food industry is free to give them the ammunition to do it.

We, as Americans, have the right to self-govern even the most destructive of personal choices, so much so we'll fight you for it should you even HINT how to address this growing epidemic. The GOP has targeted the First Lady's work with curbing childhood obesity by insinuating it will give the government some kind of overreaching control over what you eat as the ultimate Nanny State.

This includes Rush Limbaugh, who is the very audience places like the Heart Attack Grill gleefully cater to.

"But Ginger... look at you. You're just as fat and have no place to judge anyone."

You're right. But I'm not out to police what people eat or drink. Part of being a liberal means I think you should have more options (and information) not less, and you ultimately get to pick what works best for you.

It's one of the main reasons I fight for same-sex marriage and cannot for the life of me fathom why anyone wouldn't, especially from this particular camp. These are liberty lovin' patriots who believe the government should keep its nose out of our business, so much so we must diligently fight against it getting too big for its britches.

Only as it turns out... the idea of what constitutes "big government" is quite conditional.

You see the same group who would rail against Michelle Obama for turning the government into a nanny state over what we EAT is perfectly okay keeping it a nanny state over who we MARRY.

Or... more truthfully... who SOMEONE ELSE marries.

In America the only rights we care about are our own. If we don't smoke, we have no problem voting against public smoking. It has nothing to do with the general health concerns of second-hand smoke... we simply don't want to be bothered by things we don't like. Otherwise we wouldn't have a cow if someone tell us we shouldn't eat certain types of food to prevent serious health issues.

So if we can marry whomever we want, it really doesn't bother us to vote against someone we don't know doing something we don't like. We try to sell it in a moral, family values package but the fact of the matter is if you're not gay it doesn't affect you. If it makes you feel oogie, then you have no problems voting on something you would NEVER allow to apply to you. You have your rights, everyone else can just suck it.

We like guns so we make gun rights as liberal as possible, even in the conservative religious South. But we don't like sex so good luck buying a vibrator in these same states you can purchase a weapon at the age of 18 simply because you want one.

"But Ginger, this is MARRIAGE. This is a sacred institution... the cornerstone of society. We can't just let ANYONE do it."

Lookit. I've heard all this before. You try to tell me that EVERY marriage affects society so we have to be careful exactly how we define "marriage." A good, stable marriage produces law-abiding, moral citizens that keep the cycle of civilization going. This is the "traditional" benefit. Gay marriages cannot naturally reproduce and as such only have the benefit of childrenless sex.... which in this country is the root of all debauchery whether gay OR straight.

(Hence the war on birth control.)

Since marriages that do not produce children are nothing but hedonistic orgies of sex without consequences, any people in them must be morally bankrupt and a blight upon society. This sounds like a pretty scary threat but the only difference is only ONE group is getting their rights subjugated because of it... by no small coincidence it's the group that looks the least like "us."

Simply put we can't make the same demands on straight marriage as we do on gay marriage, lest we affect our own rights.

From where I'm sitting the only threat to marriage comes from those who can, y'know, actually get married. So far we straight married folks have run the show and I gotta tell you... our track record is not so hot. A whopping half of heterosexual marriages fail, which has nothing whatsoever to do with gays having the equal right to marry. It has to do with the two people who happen to be IN the marriage themselves.

Like the morbidly obese patrons pounding back unlimited fries cooked in lard, we straights are free to marry ANYONE we choose, even those who are not good for us... so long as they are the opposite sex and above a certain age and consent. We do not have to go through any testing to prove that we would be a good parent to the next generation of society (nor, apparently, do we get any kind of training to do so at all.) In fact, all our training *really* comes from those generations who came before, so that would make this a very "traditional" problem. Yet no counsel is going to go through our history or the history of our beloved to find out if it is beneficial to society should we couple and reproduce.

It's probably a good thing because most of us couldn't stand up to the scrutiny. We think we're so moral just because we are attracted to the "right" sex but you can't judge morality based on one personality trait. Gays got the rep for hedonistic sex with multiple partners but we straights are just as promiscuous, especially when judged through the prism of another person's values.

That is why it is one of our basic rights to self-govern and make these choices for ourselves. One of the most important decisions you will ever make in your life is who you will marry. The idea of someone else choosing our mate is antiquated. Arranged marriages are for other cultures and religions, here in America we are free to pick our spouses for our own reasons no matter what those reasons happen to be. You don't have to know your partner any length of time, you can get married the very same day you meet.

You don't have to make a certain amount of money, you don't have to be of corresponding religions (or any religion at all.) You don't even have to agree to have kids. You can have 20 or none at all. Once you hit the age the law figures you're free to consent all bets are pretty much off as long as you marry someone of the other gender. Everything else is deferred to the freedom of individual choice because these are considered choices that only we can make for ourselves. If government were in charge of that it would be the ULTIMATE nanny state that each and every straight person would be foursquare against.

Which member of our Congress do YOU trust enough to make this decision? You already think the government is broken and corrupt, do you really think you'd let them pick your spouse?

BUT...

For gay couples this is the reality. There IS a governing body that tells them if they want to marry the person they love and trust most in this world they're S.O.L because it's not someone whom THEY approve by failing only ONE part of a three-part criteria.

That's why you'll get marriages like this:

and it be perfectly legal. In order for them to satisfy the "traditional marriage contract" with society all they have to do is reproduce.



See no matter what you or I think about that pairing, it's still legal just because it fits this limited criteria that leaves all the minor details like love, respect, maturity and compatibility up to personal liberty. If we tried to impose any kind of checklist voted upon by the general public on what makes a proper spouse people would have a hissy fit of gargantuan proportions. At that point we're not just affecting a hypothetical "them"... we're talking about rights that could apply to US.

You think I'm kidding, just even JOKE about taking away someone's dessert for a salad grown on the White House lawn.

Even though we know that eating whatever we want can lead to health epidemics like heart disease and diabetes, we'll fight to the death to hang onto our bacon double cheeseburgers in our chubby, greasy fingers. And even though we know "traditional" heterosexual parents can produce criminals, degenerates and *gasp* HOMOSEXUALS... straight people are allowed to marry whomever they choose as many times as it takes to get it right... whether or NOT they have kids and no matter the "quality" of citizens those children turn out to be.

It's our right, by God, and we will defend it to the death - preferably someone else's. And we will fight for the right to keep it this way against a very tiny segment of our society who, by your logic, couldn't produce any questionable offspring to begin with.

The capper on this epitome of hypocrisy? The very next question out of any gay marriage opponent, "What's next? Legalize bigamy??"

Ermmmmmmmmm........... IF the purpose of marriage is children, bigamists have that down pat more than any of us. They're willing to keep adding breed mares to the stable to ensure that they have enormous families FULL of God-fearing children who will likewise do the same.

And... I mean, I hate to break it to you because you seem like you don't know but... *bigamy is a traditional form of marriage in the Bible.*

They take "go forth and multiply" to the Old Testament extreme.

So before you get all pious and self-righteous with me about those homosexual sinners and their "special" rights, I want you to consider this:

Gluttony is a sin too. You can't decry Michelle Obama's work to prevent an escalating epidemic we all will ultimately have to pay for as some socialist nanny nonsense while deciding on any level who someone ELSE should marry.

All you really do is open the government up to be the final authority over what defines a marriage at all.

Who decides what that is if it's not you and the person you love?

Think about it the next time you're knuckle-deep in a double double with cheese with a side of super-sized fries.

The Gay Agenda, Traditional Family Values and Ellen Degeneres

Yesterday a federal district court judge declared that Prop 8 - the proposition put before California voters to eliminate rights to same-sex couples who wish to marry - was unconstitutional. This is huge news for those of us who believe that rights are not something that can be arbitrarily voted upon based on the majority rule (because they are, in fact, "rights".) But it also volleys the ball back over to our opponents who feel that allowing gays to marry is a lethal blow against "traditional" family values.

Those of us who believe that gay Americans have just as many rights as straight Americans are often accused of having some sinister "agenda" that will seek to undermine the family unit. If gays can marry next thing you know we'll condone multiple marriages or marriages with the nearest goat you can find.



It'll be one giant hedonistic glittery disco of unfettered self-expression and the exercise of free will.

The horror... the horror...

Is this where I point out the one gift God gave us WAS free will, and yet that's the one thing people seek to suppress in the name of God?

I find that interesting.

I also find it interesting that these people who find gay marriage so threatening can't really say what it is about gay marriage that would tear the "traditional" family units asunder.

It usually boils down to a matter of personal comfort. "I don't want to have to explain to my kids why two men can get married."

You know what would happen if you explained to a kid that two men got married? They'd act quite similarly to Calen here, who thought it was "funny" and then quickly lost interest. Kids have the ability to take in information without attaching any hangups onto it. They have the luxury of having no agenda because they quite naturally filter everything through their very innocent experiences.

The only people attaching perversion to it are the people who have the sole agenda of vilifying it to make it sound like the worst case scenario so they can use it as an instrument of fear.

No wonder everyone is so freaked out.

I'll break it down for you.

If your problem with homosexuality comes from the Bible, that's fine. No one is making it illegal to have an opinion based on your religious beliefs. Whether you believe homosexuality is a sin or wearing a tattoo sends you to hell or wearing a chicken suit on a Friday will transport you to Mars... no one is policing what you *believe.* Our country was birthed on the idea of religious freedom, a very sacred personal freedom protected by the constitution, which also entitles you to freedom of speech so you can bitch all you want about how much you don't like it. And here's the good news, even if same-sex marriage is federally recognized your church will never be forced to conduct marriages against its particular belief system, that's the beauty of the separation of church and state. While the law has to play fair, religion is allowed to make and follow its own rules short of stoning infidels. But opinions on how you think it's a sin and everyone who does it going to hell? That's between you and your God.

But that's where it does (and should) end.

The very document that assures you that right to freely exercise your religion also prohibits you from using that same religion to make any law upholding that belief on everyone else, which makes sure that EVERYONE has the same right to religious freedom, whether their religions agree or not.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

It's the very first thing mentioned, so it's pretty important. No one can legislate your having an opinion on gays going to hell for being dirty-dog sinners BUT you also don't get to use your religion to make laws for those who don't share your same religious view. One is the yin to the other's yang; two opposites working together in natural order to achieve fairness and equality so that people from different backgrounds and beliefs can live "free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life."

(i.e. liberty)

And I also would like to point out if you have to AMEND a document to make sure same-sex couples cannot marry, then that implies that right to marry anyone you choose ALREADY EXISTS. So changing the document to specifically address something that wasn't "traditionally" specified based on nothing more than religious principle is at its very heart unconstitutional.

But let's forget that little inconsistency for a moment and look at the larger picture: what are traditional values?

According to the dictionary, "traditional" simply means "Existing in or as part of a tradition; long-established," i.e. a lot of people doing the same thing for a long time.

Just because something is "traditional" doesn't necessarily mean it's ideal, or even good. A few hundred years ago slavery was a "traditional" family value. The law stripped a certain group of people of their very humanity, making it acceptable to condone human bondage. We as a nation not only saw people as less than human, we taught these principles to generations of kids for centuries. These weren't bad people, necessarily. Decent, God-fearing Christians owned slaves and profited under this established law, and believed in its validity enough to go to war over it.

Even the Bible speaks of the relationship between slave and master. It was simply an accepted way of life until we finally said "no" to a bad tradition and "yes" to positive change.

Today we understand that slavery, while it existed for thousands of years, is a bad thing... and we abolished any laws that allowed it. It took a little longer but we also made great strides to right any wrongs that prevent us from seeing our fellow American as an equal, worthy of the same rights we uphold for ourselves. Thanks to the evolving nature of compassion we've made new laws. And we're not done yet.

But that's the great thing about humans. We can grow, adapt... evolve. We can learn from the past to make a better future. We don't have to be slaves to "tradition" if the tradition does not serve humanity as a whole.

A few decades ago it was illegal to marry someone of another race. Those who had the misfortune of falling in love with someone with a different skin color were penalized by the law which tried to maintain the "tradition" of keeping races pure and separate.

Correct me if I'm wrong but... wasn't that a HITLER family value?

As the decades marched on the world shrunk. We can't help but realize that there is more about us that is similar than different. We see ourselves in the faces of our "enemies" and are able to carry out the Christian directive of loving them - extending grace and acceptance as we would expect our own Savior to do to us. We didn't have to earn our way into it (and couldn't, even if we wanted to.) It's a gift we got just being born into the human race, one we must carry on to others.

Likewise there are certain rights we have as American citizens that we were born into rather than earn. These rights are the inalienable rights to pursue our own definition of happiness, something that shouldn't be subject to law. I wouldn't want my ability to marry the person I love thwarted by complete strangers who didn't even know me. I very much doubt you would either.

For some reason many Americans believe they can govern the lives of others and use the law as a pulpit of oppression. This never works long-term, not really. As a tradition it is horribly out-dated because of this ineffectiveness, which always leads to more harm than good.

We treat things like gay marriage as "threats" to what we know and in doing so demonstrate we know nothing. Gay marriage isn't some new fad, it reaches back into the ancient world. Yet, despite the presence of this "threat," heterosexual marriage has continued throughout history as the "mainstream" norm anyway.

So this means that the threat to the "traditional" family unit comes more from the family itself, you know - the actual people involved - rather than some vague concept of how anyone else you may never even meet manages lives you'll never touch.

Which brings us to our "values."

This may surprise you but... gay people are not any more sex-starved and hedonistic than their heterosexual counterparts. They are sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, friends and family. They are more defined by their own character, or at least should be, rather than who shows up in their bed.

That means they are just like you. They have hopes and dreams and want to be loved and accepted just like anyone else. And the more you try to oppress that, the harder they are going to fight back against it. In other words, they wouldn't have an agenda if there wasn't already an agenda against them. The gay agenda is simply to have you stop beating up on them because they're gay.

News flash: this is not a gay thing, this is a human thing. You would do likewise. If your eyes are blue and I said that you were some kind of mutant and you needed to change your brown eyes blue to have the rights of a "normal" brown-eyed person, you'd be pretty ticked off. You'd argue you were proud of your blue eyes no matter what anyone thought about it, and it's pretty darn silly to expect you to change something about the way you were born just to be treated like you should be treated. You'd see the unfairness about it and - since it affects you - you'd fight just as hard to be treated equally as you do to keep "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance or your right to bear arms.

Even if you argue that you think gay is a choice, in America they should be as free to make it as you are to make yours... INCLUDING the person you marry.

They are fighting for the equal right to marry the people they love and all the rights that comes with it. Equal but separate didn't work in the turbulent 1960s when it came to race relations and it doesn't work now. Gay couples who are totally committed can be torn apart and raided by the government even with all the legal documents in place that SHOULD make up for the 1000+ rights they lose by not being federally recognized as a married couple.

So when you tell me that legalizing gay marriage is a threat, I tell you that criminalizing it is more of a threat. It opens the door for the morality of a stranger to dictate your personal experience. These are people who are passionate about their OWN agenda (making the government the morality police) but yet have no dog in the race whether or not gay marriage is legal except some theoretical idea that it "MAY" pose a threat in the future.

How would you like a total stranger to decide how you live your life based on a "maybe" that has no historical evidence as being proven true? What if it's someone who is of another religion? Or no religion at all?

I hate to break it to you but if you support this mindset then you put your own liberties up for grabs. By violating the constitution to bend it to your will you set precedence for others to do likewise, and my guess is you won't like it when you're on the receiving end of this oppression.

As much as you think you're in the majority, your hold is slipping as the other humans around you are evolving past these "traditional" mindsets. Newer generations aren't scared of the scary gay agenda because they've gotten to know some gay folks and realize... THEY DON'T HAVE ONE.

Which brings us to Ellen Degeneres.

In 1997 she put her career at risk to "come out of the closet" as a lesbian, both in real life and on her sitcom "Ellen." She did it because she wanted to live her life with a certain integrity - to be honest about who she was no matter what the cost. In doing so she faced a backlash that nearly crippled her career as quickly as it shuttered her TV show.



Looking back now it's hard to believe she met with such resistance. It happened only 15 short years ago, but a lot can happen in 15 years. Now same-sex marriages are legal in a handful of states (and growing.) It also proved outing yourself as gay no longer is a deal breaker with the American public. Gay actors regularly find work on TV and in film. This includes Ellen's wildly successful, award-winning talk show that is a hit with both gays and straights. What few haters are left she uses as motivators to keep living her life with the same integrity that ultimately won back a larger audience that what she lost.



She's no longer seen as a scary lesbian, she's seen as a fully faceted person who is more than the sum of her parts, one people want to support and champion in a way she probably never dreamed possible a decade ago. But this brave pioneer painted a very human face on many "scary gays" for a national audience that has changed the world in a rather remarkable way.

The percentage of those who believe that being gay isn't the worst thing you can be and gay marriage isn't really that big of a threat at all is growing. That means the lesson kids are really learning is that gay people are just people, and they deserve rights just like anyone else. I figure it'll only take about 10-15 more years before it will be inconceivable for us to believe that same-sex marriage was ever illegal at all, much like interracial marriage before it.

If there's one tradition I know will always endure is that the Universe will ultimately right any traditional "wrongs." It starts with opening up to change rather than resisting it.

So if you ever want to know what my family values are, I'll tell you outright: integrity, honesty, acceptance, justice, kindness, compassion and empathy. My agenda? To join together with as many like-minded people as possible so that traditional values like bigotry and oppression are nothing but faint specks in the tail lights.