Friday, May 20, 2005

PETA AND THE RIGHT TO LIFE

Good morning, and welcome to "The Gods Are Bored." Check out your local newspaper, see if it hires union reporters. If not, cancel that sucker. You can get all the news you need right from this fair and balanced blog.

In previous posts I have described myself as a kitten-killing, homo-loving, pro-union, tax-and-spend liberal. And it occurred to me yesterday that I might be putting a huge number of fine women at risk by describing myself that way.

I mean, there's 3 Anne Johnsons who fill their prescriptions at my local pharmacy. One of them famously cracked up a whole room of Kept Women at PTA by thanking me loudly for the free diaphragm - they'd put in the wrong insurance number. I love that story, don't you?

It's the "kitten-killing" part of my description that has me worried today, although the tax-and-spend liberal part could get me strung up in many places, particularly from the rafters of mega-churches.

Folks, the "kitten-killing" tag is metaphorical. I don't kill kittens. In fact, I volunteer as a kitten foster mother at the local pound. Just now I have a litter of four downstairs that were found in the back of a Target truck as it was being unloaded about 300 miles from its point of origin. Poor babies! They were all of two weeks old when I got them. But they took to me fast. They're thriving and will be ready for adoption around Memorial Day, and two of them have already found homes.

For a moment yesterday I pictured those wackadoos at PETA summarily gunning down every Anne Johnson, in hopes of offing the actual kitten-killer. PETA, no Anne Johnson I know kills kittens, including myself.

The idea for calling myself a kitten-killer came from my sister, who is a Chippie (Right-wing Christian activist). When I told her I'd become a druid, she said, "Don't they slaughter kittens at midnight in pentagrams?" Which, come to think of it, is just about what you'd expect someone to say who listens to Dobson faithfully every day.

False, totally untrue. Druids do not perform human or animal sacrifices. And as a goat judge, I just cringe when I read the Old Testament, where they describe such practices - particularly aimed at goats - in some detail. As a goat judge, you're not looking for the best animal for sacrifice. You're looking for good milk-makers. They're meant to live, to be milked for cheese that tastes good on salad.

In fact, I should be in excellent standing with PETA. When I discovered a stray cat in my backyard, I had her trapped and spayed, and then I removed all my beloved bird feeders. Can't be luring innocent chickadees to their death. I have since adopted the cat. She sheds on my rug.

Now, this next part may surprise you fascist Christian conservatives out there, but I believe in the Right to Life. Life is a gift, right?

Here's the rub. Where do we draw the line on Right to Life?

If you're a druid, and you weed your garden and pull out new, young tree seedlings because they're in the flower bed, you're committing murder. Those baby trees have as much right to life as the kittens downstairs. If you retire to your front porch to pray for forgiveness to the Green Man, and a mosquito lands on your arm and proceeds to probe, you can't slap that bugger dead. Mosquitoes are alive. Who says they have any less Right to Life than I do?

You think I'm being facetious, but I'm not. I won't kill a spider, I won't kill ants at picnics, I hate pulling weeds (it's a sin), but hey, this is Stepford, and one must keep up the old property or face public approbation.

Everything that's alive has a Right to Life. So, along with PETA, I would consider an anti-abortion activitist who worked, say, at a slaughterhouse, to be the worst kind of hypocrit. Equally, I would consider an anti-abortion activist who worked as a logger or who supported logging "interests" to be either a murderer or an accomplice to murder.

When my daughter The Spare got strep throat, I said, "Well, there's medicine to cure this, but Streptococci have a Right to Life, and they've decided to live in your throat. Who do you want me to give your teddy bears to when you're dead?"

In all seriousness, where do we draw a line on Right to Life? Does a white, suburban fetus have more of a Right to Life than an eight-year-old Ugandan? Why don't you placard-waving Chippies stop taking the easy road by standing in front of the women's clinic, and start saving your time and money to go save African children who are suffering worse than American dogs ever dared to suffer? Don't tell me your church tithes cover that. What a lame answer. You're spending six hours in front of a clinic, you could be working at McDonald's, saving those wages, and giving more to Africa!

Or, have regular yard sales at your church. I need the cheap household items.

When the druid theocracy is established in the Empire of America, it will be illegal to pull up a tree, even if it's growing into your bedroom window. All spraying of mosquito-infested marshes will be outlawed, and no human will be issued any sort of medication to kill a virus or a bacterial infection. Right to Life will be taken literally, and that includes root vegetables. No more eating carrots and potatoes. It kills the plant. And carrots have a Right to Life.

Since I don't like carrots, I'm anxiously awaiting the druid theocracy in the Empire of America. The way certain Republicans are behaving is actually encouraging the bored gods to revise certain timelines they've been keeping about these things.
ANNE SUPPORTS THE AVIAN FLU VIRUS'S RIGHT TO LIFE

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