Thursday, January 31, 2008

New Mississippi Motto: We Hate Fat People!


Apparently lawmakers in Mississippi have decided that their citizens are too stupid to make decisions for themselves. So leave it to a politician to come up with a bill that will prohibit restaurants from serving obese people. Yep! You read that right! If this bill goes through and you are obese and in Mississippi, forget eating out at your favorite restaurants. The lawmakers don't want you there! I know this seems completely absurd and sounds like a hoax, but sadly it's not. Here's the bill in all it's asinine glory:

(You can view the pdf file here or just read below...)

HOUSE BILL NO. 282
AN ACT TO PROHIBIT CERTAIN FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS FROM SERVING FOOD TO ANY PERSON WHO IS OBESE, BASED ON CRITERIA PRESCRIBED BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH; TO DIRECT THE DEPARTMENT TO PREPARE WRITTEN MATERIALS THAT DESCRIBE AND EXPLAIN THE CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING WHETHER A PERSON IS OBESE AND TO PROVIDE THOSE MATERIALS TO THE FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS; TO DIRECT THE DEPARTMENT TO MONITOR THE FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS FOR COMPLIANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF THIS ACT; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI:
SECTION 1. (1) The provisions of this section shall apply to any food establishment that is required to obtain a permit from the State Department of Health under Section 41-3-15(4)(f), that operates primarily in an enclosed facility and that has five (5) or more seats for customers.
(2) Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies. A food establishment shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.
(3) The State Department of Health shall monitor the food establishments to which this section applies for compliance with the provisions of this section, and may revoke the permit of any food establishment that repeatedly violates the provisions of this section.
SECTION 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 2008.

H. B. No. 282 *HR03/R51*
08/HR03/R51
PAGE 2 (RF\LH)
ST: Food establishments; prohibit from serving
food to any person who is obese.


In case you can't tell, I'm more than a little ticked off by this. I swear if ignorance was money, these jerk-offs wouldn't need tax money, they'd be rolling in the dough. Do they really think the American public will stand for this? Do they really think it will "help" obese people? I really get the feeling this is another way to say "we are offended by fat people. Let's get them out of our sight so our delicate sensibilities won't be repulsed!" It's absurd! It's outrageous! It's discrimination! This is no different than singling someone out because of their race.
What's next Mississippi lawmakers? Will we be too short? Too tall? Too ugly? This may sound ridiculous to some... but if we allow this kind of contemptible behavior now, we can only guess what they will come up with next.

If you are a resident of Mississippi, I urge you to contact your representatives and senators and express your outrage at this bill.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you kidding me? Surely the restaurateurs are also appalled. I'm sure they won't want to be passing that kind of judgment out on their clients.

I'm officially scared of the south now!

Alcinda (Cindy) Moore said...

Unbelievable!! Well, I guess that would mean that Brad Pitt wouldn't be able to eat in any of the local restaurants!

Anonymous said...

Hello everyone,

well I'm not american, I'm from Chile, but I've been in the US several times,honestly I think that people should be educated about nutrition, I mean, nobody needs to tell you what or where you have to eat, but people needs to be educated. When I was there I felt quite surprised because everyone was fat, but that's not just a problem of 1st world countries, because in Chile we have similar problems the 70% of chilean population has weight problems...I'm not in that percentage I'm 1,63 mt and I wight 53 kg. Honestly I eat all kind of food but in decent portions.

Eliana