Subject: Re: Law Against Obesity?
Author: trishaDate: 24 Jul
Ref:
Barring my feelings about Tom and his spouting off....
Before we go trying to legislate obesity it might do some good to
research the disease itself. Yes, it is a disease. Compulsive
overeating and binge eating is a recognized psychiatric disorder.
Does anyone honestly think that people wake up one morning and say,
"Hey, I think I'll get fat. Starting right now, I'm going to pile on
the pounds until I can't find decent clothes, till people laugh at me,
and until I am discriminated against in the workplace and many other
ways."
Many, many people who are morbidly obese have a history of some form
of abuse. They cannot control the person abusing them, but they CAN
control what they eat. Food is a quiet companion. It doesn't talk
back. It doesn't say nasty things. It doesn't reject them or call
them stupid or abuse or molest them. It doesn't neglect them. It is
there for them no matter what. It helps cover up the pain and in fact
eases it to a point. It is a comfort to someone in immense
psychological pain.
We don't legislate drunks or drug addicts. Child molesters get off
with a slap on the hand. Drunk drivers who hit someone and kill them
often don't even go to jail. Yet some idiot in the legislature who is
offended by a fat person, possibly because of their own fears of being
out of control, wants to legislate people in enough pain to put their
physical lives in danger by overeating?
How totally ignorant and ludicrous.
And how immature.
And prejudiced.
And insensitive.
Instead, how about allowing for mental health care and counseling for
these people so that whatever it is they are dealing with can come to
light and perhaps, through that, they can learn to cope in a more
positive fashion and maybe learn to overcome the giant and lose the
excess weight along with the fears that put it there?
Only the perfect have the right to say who and how people ought to
be. There was only one perfect Man, and they hung him up on a cross.
Trisha in MO
aka_velcro
ReaderRabbit
