A member of another misunerstood and put-upon minority (only 10 million Americans out of more than 300 million) asks for our understanding:
Please don't try to convince us that being vegetarian is somehow wrong. If you're concerned for my health, that's very nice, though you can rest assured that I'm in shipshape. If you want to have an amiable tête-à-tête about vegetarianism, that's great. But if you insist on being the aggressive blowhard who takes meatlessness as a personal insult and rails about what fools we all are, you're only going to persuade me that you're a dickhead. When someone says he's Catholic, you probably don't start the stump speech about how God is a lie created to enslave the ignorant masses, and it's equally offensive to berate an herbivore. I know you think we're crazy. That's neat. But seeing as I've endured the hassle of being a vegetarian for several years now, perhaps I've given this a little thought.
Actually, I'm not all that unsympathetic. Most of the neoPuritans' efforts to get sin out of the world -- smoking bans, anti-drinking campaigns, anti-sex and -gambling screeds -- will fail. It's part of human nature to succumb to human weakness. But I think vegetarinaism will be the norm somewhere in the human future (and this comes from a dedicated prime-rib loving, pork-chop chomping fiend). There is something fundamentally creepy about surviving by eating (in the words of the admirable vegetarian and musician Arlo Guthrie) "the burnt, dead flesh of other animals." As scientists and nutritionists get more adept at producing better-tasting and equally nutritious meat substitutes, the number of vegetarians will continue to grow.
