Posted on 03/02/2003 5:11:15 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
One of THE and I mean THE major proponents of these anti-smoker ordinances is also a major proponent of gay adoptions. He and his "life partner" find me and my husband, because we are smokers, to be poor role models for our daughter. Yet he believes he and his "life partner" are better role models for their "daughters" because they do not smoke.
One of his websites actually brags about having legal means to help one parent get custody in divorce disputes just because the other parent happens to smoke. They also talk about how others can get child protective services to investigate and harass people just because they are smokers.
So much of what you have to say about smoking and smokers is nearly verbatim of this verbiage - I have to wonder just what else of these causes you might be willing to espouse.
Early death? Is that why we just had a guy die early because he drank and smoked all his life?
He was 113 year old.
Who elected the mayor? The City Council?
They are supposed to put things like this to a vote of the PEOPLE!!
I'll bet you would be pissed if they just up and took one of your rights away without your vote.
Yes, it should be up to the business, because they are the ones that lose the customers.
I for one WILL NOT go anywhere that I can not smoke. I travel all over the country, and a lot of places lose my money and many of the people I know as well.
That's the same sort of logic used by the Left to say that the Right must all be Nazis, because Hitler was anti-Communist.
The fact is that there are scads of "legal" activities that, in another context, are illegal.
It isn't legal to have group-sex in a restaurant, though it is perfectly legal, and proper by any religious standard, for a husband and wife to have sexual relations in their bedroom, with the door locked.
Therefore, simply saying "smoking is a legal activity, therefore it cannot be curtailed or restricted in any way" is a totally hollow argument.
It is perfectly reasonable for me as a non-smoker to expect you, a smoker, to pursue your habit in your own home, and not where it will cause me distress. Your only real argument is that you have, till now, had that right.
Well, I can make the same argument for wife-beating, which until just a few generations ago was considered the "right" of a husband in handling his wife ("rule of thumb" and all that, you know).
In other words, times change, and public sentiment changes. Smoking in a public place is no longer considered a benign and inconsequential activity.
Do it in your home, not in places of public accomodation where I have to endure it.
We both need air; you CHOOSE to smoke. Your choice, your consequence. NOT mine.
What logic??????
You have no right to smoke where it inconveniences me.
This is logic??? It's your personal opinion - it is not logic. If I own the establishment and permitting smoking is to my convenience, the only right you have is to not bother entering.
You have no right to pollute the common atmosphere for the sake of your addiction.
I assume you do not drive a gasoline powered vehicle. You never barbeque. Don't have a fireplace. Never use anything but a push mower to cut your grass.
Please get a grip - being so overly concerned about someone enjoying a cigarette after their meal or with a drink in an establishment where the owners have chosen to permit such will probably do more harm to your health than those few little whiffs of second hand smoke.
You are right Woody, sure sounded like a threat of physical violence to me.
And you base this observation on what? Did you not elect your representatives, in this case the city council? Did you not elect your mayor?
Again, are you for direct democracy? You ARE aware that in general conservatives tend to favor REPRESENTATIVE democracy aren't you?
I'll bet you would be pissed if they just up and took one of your rights away without your vote.
What "right" are you alleging is taken away? Perhaps MY right to breathe air unladen with the poisons engendered from burning tobacco has just been RESTORED.
That is your right. Hopefully, the only place left to you soon will be your own home.
That is right and proper, for a man's home is his castle.
Just keep your filthy habit to yourself, I want no part of it.
Excuse me, but the notion that your rights end where they conflict with the rights of others is HARDLY something I came up with from my own, admittedly fertile brain.
Yes I'm brilliant, but I didn't invent this notion.
The fact is that your "right" to smoke does not exist as a freestanding "right." It is merely an appendage to your right to "pursue happiness" as long as that pursuit doesn't impinge on others.
You and I both have the "right" to breathe air. However, you CHOOSE to pollute your air with carcinogens and foul, noxious smoke.
That is NOT my choice, it is yours. Therefore, YOU should be left to cope with the consequences of your choice alone; it is NOT right to ask me to share in those consequences. You have, therefore, no "right" to smoke in public, none at all, no more than you have the right to have sex in a restaurant in full view of other customers.
What is proper in one context isn't in another. You may smoke in your home. You may NOT smoke in a public place of accomodation, if the laws prohibit it.
I and others like me are fully in support of laws prohibiting smoking in public places of accomodation, and we are winning because the logic is irrefutable.
Sounds like you may have wound up in Delaware, not Alabama.
The smoking ban in Delaware is utterly ridiculous - businesses are being decimated because it is so easy to go to another state, particularly Maryland.
Some Maryland legislator has proposed a similar ban to Delaware's - I don't see how it can possibly fly - and the Governor has said he is opposed to it. but only time will tell.
See, so as I said earlier, your motive is to get rid of smoking EVERYWHERE!
Sounds like a Nazi to me, if you don't like it, then it must be outlawed for everyone everywhere.
To think I actually served my country, protecting peoples rights. Seems I only protected the Nazi's rights and not my own.
I'm going to ask you to prove that.
You still refuse to answer the question.
I don't recall your asking me a question. Please restate it.
Nope, in Orygun :(
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