ravan | Un-Fucking-Believable!!

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Un-Fucking-Believable!!

Lawmakers want to deny fat people (as definaed by the state and their bogus BMI charts) the right to eat out.

Yep, fat folks are the new "niggers" in modern society - but in these fruitcakes minds, it's "different", because "obesity" is controllable by willpower, and fat folks are just "lazy" and "weak".

<sarcasm>Yesa massa, I just be shuckin' and jivin' and I get mah food to go at the back door. I won't make yah loose yah license for feedin' fatties in public.</sarcasm>

Yes, all you people who cheered when they started making all kinds of laws against smoking in public and then private spaces, guess what? This is the logical extension - legislation of personal choice in the interests of the state keeping its "costs" down.

Where's my fucking chocolate. I swear, if I lived in this asshole's state I'd stage an "eat-in" at his office. Fucking health nazi.

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Ugh. What will it take for Americans to stop accepting abuse from these control freaks?

However, I don't accept smoking as a good analogy. That local law that you can't smoke in any dwelling in . . . is it Menlo Park? . . . is disgraceful. The point on that slippery slope to legally rebel was, IMO, when employers started refusing to hire smokers whether or not they confined their smoking to after work. But smoking in restaurants prevents others from going to the restaurants. And smoking is an either/or thing; either a person has lit tobacco on their person, or they don't. Whereas BMI is a scale. Laws against smoking indoors in public establishments are reasonable, in my view. Where one might debate is laws against smoking in outdoor public areas, such as on restaurant patios, at doors, or at bus stops. I've gone from being impervious to smoke so long as it doesn't contain cannabis to getting short of breath and ill when someone smokes within about fifteen feet; I have to do a dance at bus stops, the smoker almost always edges closer. I didn't realize until these past few years that it was even a problem outdoors.

But smoking at home is people's own business, and how fat they are is entirely so--or indeed how skinny, or how fit. None of these is either contagious or dangerous to anyone else's health!

M

Excellent points re: smoking. I have asthma. Other people's fat doesn't affect my breathing unless they're leaning on me or something. However, depending on wind direction, a smoker immediately outside a door is just being rude because I may have to walk through her sidestream to leave the building; also, a bar that allows smoking is one more venue where I can't come out and support my friend's band. There's a ripple effect.

OK, how about helmet and seatbelt laws for adults - more the type of thing that this weight limit for restaurants is?

I don't know. My analogy loop hit a fatal error when I suddenly pictured Hannibal Lecter in his special protective mask.

Honestly, I don't know if there's a good real-life comparison. Supposedly this one is just a publicity stunt, but even if so, the underlying message remains uniquely evil -- restrictive in a special and possibly incomparable way: what you ARE when you walk in the door is grounds for restriction. You don't have to light anything up, or start any gas-powered (or hybrid) engine. You just have to stand there and have a high BMI.

I will not make a Godwin's Law -- or Tubman's Law -- comparison, but it does restrict behavior based on a physical characteristic.

Those are justified by supposedly saving lives. Best analogy I can come up with right now is the drinking age--particularly the federally preferred 21. A big argument for that back when they started demanding states change their laws was that the youngest drinkers have the most car wrecks, which is in part the same "You are indulging in an activity that is hurting you" argument. Since it doesn't follow that you would drive after drinking, I'd put that up as an analogy even though if you do, you might well take out someone else. The less good analogy, because more extreme, would be the US and Canadian governments taking away NA/FN children. "We know you will damage these kids because of what you are so we will protect them by having someone else foster them." It's probably a good sign I'm not coming up with anything else in law.

M

Drinking age and drunk driving restrictions are to save *other* people's lives. Drunk drivers usually don't die themselves, they just kill someone else.

But seatbelt laws for adults, helmet laws for adults, and NA childstealing are purely nanny state items.

. . . except that 18- and 19-y.o. drinkers are not necessarily going to drive after they drink. Two separate actions. Forbidding them to drink--although they are legal adults--has no justification except "We know better than you what's good for you." They wouldn't be endangering anyone else simply by drinking (and indeed tend to do it at house parties).

I think reasonable people could differ on the seatbelt law up until they started designing cars to protect you if you were properly positioned in the seat. I'm honestly not sure how valid the argument is that you can lose control of the wheel much more easily without a seatbelt, I've heard of cases where the seatbelt would not release and so someone couldn't get out (my mother witnessed one, but they may well have been cutting through the door, too--she's not very mechanically savvy), and I wish they would stop using pictures of women with scarred faces because I would prefer a scarred face over being trapped in a burning car . . . but I honestly don't know how the risks stack up, I'm just very glad cars are safer now. Bikes, I know even less, but I suspect you do need a helmet. Bicycles, on the other hand . . . that strikes me as overkill. And forbidding people to go in the water when there is no lifeguard--I guess I just don't believe any swell can be so dangerous that paddling is going to be lethal.

M

IMO, the age 21 to drink is nanny state - you're old enough to die for your country, but not old enough to drink?

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