Friday, April 3, 2009

The Tyranny of the Majority

Or "Why I would rather not live in Kansas"

This morning my daughter walked in with a Lunchable in her hand. As I was getting her a bag to carry it in (good job mom...loser) she explained to me why she was bringing what they call "a home sack".

For you people on the coast, it's Lent. And as we approach the day when the Holy Easter Bunny laid a chocolate egg and the Jesus Zombie™ clawed his way out of his grave, Catholics don't eat meat on Friday. My theology might be a little mixed up there, and the whole no meat on Friday but transubstantiation on Sunday thing is simultaneously gross, inconsistent, and fascinating...but I digress.

The PUBLIC Schools out here dont serve meat on Fridays during Lent. If you are a secular kid that would rather not eat what passes for "fish" from a school cafeteria (and my pre-foodie kids fall into that category most certainly) then you are out of luck. Instead of the Catholic kids packing a PB&J on Fridays, my kids have to acommodate them.

Nevermind that I had NO idea this was going on and our other two children are going to have to just deal with the fish today. I'll be sure to pack them a lunch next week...we'll call it a Darwin Sack just to be obstinate.

Could somebody PLEASE explain to me how this is even remotely allowable under the First Amendment?

Now if I could just get one of this kids to have as bad of an attitude as I had at that age and say to the lunch lady, "Im not Catholic, I'll take the normal lunch" and cause a stink...my life would be complete.

2 comments:

Mike Teeters said...

What we have on the menu today is reconstituted fish meal ... in the shape of a fish!

Anonymous said...

Hi Mike. I am a grad student in biology in Montana. I came across one of your comments on Buddhism and I thought that you might be someone to ask this question. I have been reading Dawkins, Hawking and listening to Lawrence krauss these days. I turned from a believer to a TAP 5.5 recently (-1.5 from an atheist's scale of 7 owing to my limited understanding of origin of matter/energy). I may label this current phase of my life as - existential crisis, perhaps, as a by product of emptiness of nothingness that most likely lies ahead. Considering your comment on that buddhism post, it appears pointless to mention that the next step in my reading list is Jean Paul Sartre and Epictetus. For quite some time, I have been looking for an unbiased non-religious philosophical view of Buddhism and I was wondering if you could suggest a reading worth the time, something written by an intellectual of the likes of Dawkins (considering that fact that I am a mere first year PhD student with zillions of things on my plate). Thanks.