[flashbunny]

I'm sure some here would echo those sentiments.

Heck, there are some who are so caught up in the "underage drinking is the devil" mantra that they think parents allowing their teenage children to drink alcohol under their direct supervision is a crime.

[Auntie Mame]

Love Dennis Prager.

If you would rather your child cheat than smoke, Dennis Prager asks that you "ponder these questions: Would you rather your business partner smoke or cheat? Your lawyer? Your friends? Would you feel better if your doctor cheated on medical exams or smoked?"

[CSM]

For your ping lists, proof that morality has given way to socialism as the new mantra for many, thus becoming their religeon.

[bmwcyle]

Why do you ask a question when both answers are no. Stupid polls are never needed and prove nothing.

[SE Mom]

It's a world gone mad that even needs this question posed, eh?

[Fierce Allegiance]

Either will get them in big trouble. My kids have been taught not to lie and warned smoking is unhealthy. That said, lying is a sin, and smoking is temporary stupidity. You can quit smoking, but a lie will always be a lie.

[Madame Dufarge]

In this secular age, focusing upon one's diet and other lifestyle choices has become an alternative to prayer and righteous living in providing a means of making sense of life and death. 'Healthiness' has replaced 'Godliness' as a yardstick of accomplishment and proper living. Public health and health promotion, then, may be viewed as contributing to the moral regulation of society, focusing as they do upon ethical and moral practices of the self."

While the new religion of health enables many people in our society to gain a sense of moral worthiness, it also provides a valuable means of censuring deviants - those new outcasts in a world where the concept of 'zero tolerance' has somehow become a 'good thing'. (The currency of this term alone, in my view, is sufficient to illustrate the extent to which we have lost the moral plot.) People who are unwilling to succumb to what the late Petr Skrabanek (a renegade Czech medic) described as 'Coercive Healthism' - those among us with 'bad habits' - are the new outcasts in this increasingly fearful and intolerant world. It is, in the words of the East London GP Michael Fitzpatrick, the Tyranny of Health which now surrounds us.

In Praise of Bad Habits

[SunkenCiv]

Or, "Would you rather your child sodomized another child of the same sex, or cheated on a test?"

[ladyinred]

I find myself laughing for some reason. I would think you could go even farther with this, and ask if you would rather they smoke or murder someone!