English

Color Me Pro-Choice

Mitchell Farnum

I don't spend a lot of time with homosexuals, chain-smokers, feminists, porn-buyers, atheists, vegetarians, or problem drinkers—but when the issues get legal, I am with them. I am pro-choice.

I think adults should have options.

I want options. I want my Marriott room to have a Gideon Bible and porn movies. Let me decide if I want to buckle my seat-belt, or drive to 11:00 Mass, or swing out to the dog-track. Let me send my kids to public school or to Holiness Tabernacle Academy. I may invite Jews and blacks to join my private club, but don't tell me I have to accept orientals or women or somebody's cousin. It's my club.

I don't like people with oppressive theories. They come around telling everybody what to do. Local 7–11's shouldn't sell Playboy. Poor women can't have abortions. Nancy Cruzan should stay hooked to that machine for another seven years. Consenting adults must go into their bedrooms and behave sensibly. Who needs this crap?

I want to make choices, even dumb ones. If I buy my Big Mac with the large order of fries (and extra salt), that's OK. If I don't buckle my seat-belt, so what? If I smoke a pack or two a day, leave me alone! I've got my rights. And among them is the right to take the consequences of what I do. Man, it's my life!

Also, let me believe what I want to. You're hearing from a man who subscribes to the National Enquirer and the Sun. So the evidence is shaky about UFOs and the Shroud of Turin and vitamin E and the Kennedy assassination? So what? If I want to believe dramatic theories, that's fine. (Tomorrow I may send off $15.95 for a talisman containing Lourdes water.) And you're free to believe your theories. If you want to think Elvis is dead, that's your business.

All this freedom is for adults who can take care of themselves. With people who can't, OK, let's pass laws. I don't mind rules that protect kids and AIDS victims and neurotics and wheelchair people and the homeless. I want laws in areas where we're all helpless—those protecting the environment and the purity of foods. I can live with traffic regulations and some antigun laws. I want ex-cons and psychopaths to have trouble buying a gun, but don't tell me I can't buy one.

Summing it up, I don't like meddling people. Spare me from censors and pro-lifers and gay-baiters and temperance advocates and anti-smoking Nazis and anybody who would enforce prayer or “political correctness” in the schools.

But don't get me wrong—I'm not some antagonistic nut. I love a lot of things—babies, Heineken beer, golden retrievers, Willie Nelson, my wife, the Atlanta Braves (with all their faults), and the Roman Catholic Church (with all its faults). And if you want to be Baptist or agnostic or gay or vegetarian, great! If you turn on to All My Children or Guns N’ Roses, hey, that's fine with me. It's a big world, friend. Enjoy yourself.

Just stay off my back.

 

cite link

Larry W. Burton; Daniel McDonald. The Language of Argument, 12th Edition., 2007. South University. Web. 26 July 2013 < http://digitalbookshelf.southuniversity.edu/books/1111439583/S1.2/10 >.