Vegetarianism vs. Baptism
Having finally made it through all of the family dinners of the holiday season, I feel obliged to gripe for a while about my in-laws. My husband's family are are hard-core Bible-thumping Baptists who like to look down off of their golden-paved path to Heaven to remind us how our heathen vegetarian ways are sending us straight to Hell. Well, first off, we don't attend church on a regular basis (read: never). I don't believe in Hell, but they sure do, and they are convinced that we are pretty much spitting in God's face by not eating the animals that He put on this planet. They believe that we have dominion over the "lower" species of Earth and this means that we can--no, must--exploit them and use them as we please for our pleasure and entertainment. My father-in-law is an animal killing machine. My in-laws' property is a sixty-five acre forest and their house sits right on the edge of it. Dear FIL will walk an acre from his house to knock down a bee hive because he saw a bee flying near the house. They have several beautiful six-toed farm cats that live outside. If an opossum is unfortunate enough to amble over to sample the cat food, Dear FIL will be there like a flash with his trusty baseball bat to crush its skull. If the cats reproduce too much, the kittens and some of the mothers get shot. When Brothers-in-law #1 and #2 (of three) saw some squirrels chasing each other and playing in a tree, they raced to the house to grab their guns, and went back and shot them. They don't eat the squirrels, mind you, they just can't stand to see them playing like that. BIL #1, by the way, is a Baptist pastor. Dear FIL and BIL 1&2 go deer hunting every winter and it is almost as much a religion to them as their beloved Baptism. They usually murder at least one deer every season. Then, the following summer, they throw all the meat in the trash because it was just too much to eat, what with all of the cow, pig, and chicken remains that are already stuffing their freezer. Three months later, though, deer hunting season rolls around again and THEY MUST KILL.
Which brings me to our family dinner with them. They know that we're vegetarians (they call it "that crazy diet"), but they either think that they can change our minds or they haven't made the connection that we're vegetarians because we have compassion and empathy for animals, or something. When we walked in for the dinner, my poor husband was immediately inundated with the latest deer massacre stories.
Dear FIL: Hey, Mr. Martey, BIL #2 almost got his deer!
Mr. Martey: Avoids eye contact, mumbles something unintelligible.
Dear FIL (not noticing Mr. Martey trying to ignore him): Yeah, he's out there looking for it right now. The arrow went right through.
Mr. Martey: Looking slightly pale.
Sister-in-law #1 (pastor's wife): Did the arrow have guts or chunks stuck to it, like it hit something?
Dear FIL: Yeah, he's trying to follow the trail of blood.
Well, this converstation when on for about 15 minutes, until BIL #2 got back. He didn't find the deer yet. In fact, he went out twice more while we were there and he never did find the deer. I really think that they think that if they talk about their exploits in hunting around my husband enough that they'll be able to convert him back to deer hunting. Back when my husband was too young to know better, he went deer hunting with his father and killed a deer with one shot while the deer was running. Dear FIL just cannot accept or understand how Mr. Martey could be opposed to killing now.
It's just that I can think of so many good reasons not to kill something that are so much better than the lame reasons people have to kill something. Here's a few arguments:
1. Animals don't have souls, so it's okay to kill them.
Okay, I absolutely do not believe this. There must be a place in Heaven for them or God wouldn't have made them. But let's pretend for a moment that they don't have souls: Why would that make it okay to kill them? If something doesn't have a soul, then its life here on Earth is the only life it gets--taking that life away would be twice as bad if that's the case.
2. It's a man's instinct to hunt.
Allright, men, it's time to pick those knuckles up off the ground and evolve, please.
3. Animals aren't as smart as us.
Oh, yes, we're all freaking rocket scientists. If it's okay to kill those dumber than us, then what about all the drooling mental retards and brain damaged people that we spend billions on in time and money to keep them alive and comfortable? That's pretty stupid.
Okay, I'm done. There's more I have to say, but it will wait for another day. I'll finish today with this: Animals aren't so different from us; they feel fear and pain, and they worry about their babies and love their companions just like we do. We don't have the right to take their lives just to feed our fat asses.
Which brings me to our family dinner with them. They know that we're vegetarians (they call it "that crazy diet"), but they either think that they can change our minds or they haven't made the connection that we're vegetarians because we have compassion and empathy for animals, or something. When we walked in for the dinner, my poor husband was immediately inundated with the latest deer massacre stories.
Dear FIL: Hey, Mr. Martey, BIL #2 almost got his deer!
Mr. Martey: Avoids eye contact, mumbles something unintelligible.
Dear FIL (not noticing Mr. Martey trying to ignore him): Yeah, he's out there looking for it right now. The arrow went right through.
Mr. Martey: Looking slightly pale.
Sister-in-law #1 (pastor's wife): Did the arrow have guts or chunks stuck to it, like it hit something?
Dear FIL: Yeah, he's trying to follow the trail of blood.
Well, this converstation when on for about 15 minutes, until BIL #2 got back. He didn't find the deer yet. In fact, he went out twice more while we were there and he never did find the deer. I really think that they think that if they talk about their exploits in hunting around my husband enough that they'll be able to convert him back to deer hunting. Back when my husband was too young to know better, he went deer hunting with his father and killed a deer with one shot while the deer was running. Dear FIL just cannot accept or understand how Mr. Martey could be opposed to killing now.
It's just that I can think of so many good reasons not to kill something that are so much better than the lame reasons people have to kill something. Here's a few arguments:
1. Animals don't have souls, so it's okay to kill them.
Okay, I absolutely do not believe this. There must be a place in Heaven for them or God wouldn't have made them. But let's pretend for a moment that they don't have souls: Why would that make it okay to kill them? If something doesn't have a soul, then its life here on Earth is the only life it gets--taking that life away would be twice as bad if that's the case.
2. It's a man's instinct to hunt.
Allright, men, it's time to pick those knuckles up off the ground and evolve, please.
3. Animals aren't as smart as us.
Oh, yes, we're all freaking rocket scientists. If it's okay to kill those dumber than us, then what about all the drooling mental retards and brain damaged people that we spend billions on in time and money to keep them alive and comfortable? That's pretty stupid.
Okay, I'm done. There's more I have to say, but it will wait for another day. I'll finish today with this: Animals aren't so different from us; they feel fear and pain, and they worry about their babies and love their companions just like we do. We don't have the right to take their lives just to feed our fat asses.
posted by Martey | 5:49 AM
1 Comments:
You know, I grew up in a hunting family. My dad and brother still go out each season to gather sustenance for their family. Shooting, skinning, gutting, slicing, fileting, and other things to those critters. My dad even traps coons over at his neighbor's house and kills them. He then skins them and takes them to a woman out in Adel who saves them until the next Wild Game Feed each winter. Yum!~ Not!
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