PETA and newly-converted vegetarians.

While I'm on the pet peeve path, I might as well get another one off my chest.

PETA and all recent converts to vegetarianism.

Some background: I've been a vegetarian since the age of 18. That's 21 years and counting. I've finally reached that point where the thought of eating meat grosses me out. I'll probably be a vegetarian for the rest of my life.

I'm a vegetarian for ethical reasons. Namely, I don't think I should eat something that I won't kill and clean myself. I don't kill animals because I don't have the ability to create another living creature, so I better not be messing something up that I can't fix.

Being a vegetarian has brought on a lot of grief. Early on, I was an asshole about my lifestyle choices, expecting everyone to cater to my particular worldview.

I'm more tolerant now. I don't want others dictating my life, so I don't think it correct for me to dictate to them on their choices, poor though they may be.

Here's my beef with PETA: PETA is to vegetarianism as the NRA is to guns. Both may have valid points, but both organizations are whack jobs.

I'm a firm believer in the 2nd Amendment and I exercise my rights. As for PETA, their antics serve to alienate the shit out of people--vegetarians included.

PETA takes the extreme position that everyone should bend to their worldview. I beg to differ. I'm perfectly capable of finding the truth on my own and don't need some ideological nimrods whose agenda excises any sense they may have had, telling me right from wrong.

Making matters worse is that by being a vegetarian, I get lumped in with the likes of PETA when non-vegetarians find out. The inevitable questions as to the why's and wherefore's of my lifestyle choices come flying.

PETA, by their actions, does not want to change people's minds. They want to piss people off so they can start a fight that they can't win. How moronic is that?

On to my next gripe: A couple of years ago I went to the home of a recently converted vegetarian. The point of my visit was to help set up her grill and to enjoy some company. Well, when I broke out my vegetarian hot dogs, I got an earful on how it was wrong to eat something that looked like meat and probably tasted like meat, even though it wasn't meat.

I was dumbstruck. What the hell? Here I was, a 20 year vegetarian being lectured by a woman who was a newly-minted vegetarian on my choice to eat a tofu pup? Give me a break.

What reeked of irony was the fact that I cooked them on her grill that I just assembled. It's not okay to eat soysage, but it's okay to have a grill whose main purpose is to cook raw meat?

Somehow, the whole PETA agenda has moved into fake meat products. How is that harmful to animals? The argument goes: By eating fake meat, I've not really given up meat and my love for it. Huh?

Ideologues are morons.