One order of 'sacred cow'... medium rare

I got an e-mail this morning from a fellow blogger giving me a 'heads up' about a hot-button topic she was discussing over on her site.  This was very thoughtful of her, since I don't get there every day.  Don't get me wrong, I think she is a very talented writer, but her topics don't consistently resonate with me... so hers is more of a once-a-week stop than an every day event.

The e-mail said, "I've just put up a flaming rant that I'm sure will get the ire up of all my readers and fellow bloggers." 

OK... I'm always ready for a little ire-upping.  Bring it on!

When I clicked over, I was confronted with a dilemma.  You see, she wasn't airing out one topic, but rather two.  More importantly, she didn't seem to care that she was serving up this blended menu of topics... which made it very difficult for her readers to address one issue without having to deal with a second, much more sensitive one.

The main target/object of her rant is a woman in her community who, based on her husband's expertise as a medical professional, frequently makes public pronouncements equating not getting ones children vaccinated with child abuse. 

Although the blogger never explicitly says that she hasn't had her children vaccinated, the reader is given the overwhelming impression that this is the case.  The cloak within which she wraps the decision to (presumably) not vaccinate her children is that well-worn American garment known as 'Freedom of Choice'.

The underlying subject of the rant is the blogger's history of being a victim of child abuse.  A good portion of her rant is spent addressing (correctly, in my opinion) the ease with which people tend to throw around the term 'child abuse' without thinking about what the gravity of the term.

Here's my problem: 

If you truly believe that your children should not be vaccinated, say so!  Clearly state your position and provide all of your reasons for making such a decision.  Once you have done so I will say exactly what I did in your comments section:

"Yes, the whole vaccination issue is a personal choice. But you neglect to point out that by choosing not to vaccinate, you are making a choice for others besides yourself and your family.

Unless you are willing to promise me that you and your children will not be interacting with the general population (i.e. shopping, going out to eat, attending schools, etc.) then you are in essence telling me that you have no regard for the very real possibility that you will be endangering the lives of the many people who are forced (they don't have a choice) to live with a suppressed immune system (the most obvious examples being cancer patients and others with compromised immune systems).

Yes, life is full of choices... but please don't pretend that your choices are not also taking away the choices (and potentially endangering the lives) of others."

However, it took me quite some time to get up the nerve to leave that comment, and I couldn't figure out why.  I usually have no problem sharing my thoughts with others... especially when I already have a clearly formed opinion on the subject. 

Then I realized that I had hesitated almost two hours before commenting because she had wrapped her subject matter (vaccination) inside a topic that one is loathe to attack (child abuse).  I found this very distasteful.

What finally tipped the scale in favor of leaving a comment (and ultimately writing about it here) is that I think it is extremely disingenuous for a blogger to bring up a serious issue that deserves public discussion, while making her position on the topic difficult to separate form a secondary  'untouchable' issue.

A completely made-up example:

Let's say I strike up a conversation with a whellchair-bound person on the train.  On top of this, the person in the wheelchair is a black woman who it turns out is blind.  During the course of the conversation we begin debating the level of accessibility that it is reasonable/practical for a government to mandate for the buildings under its jurisdiction. 

I opine that it is perfectly reasonable to require that all new buildings be constructed with full accessibility to the disabled... but that I don't think that it is feasible to retrofit every single building in the country to bring it up to code. 

The woman in the wheelchair responds loudly that she feels I am prejudiced because I obviously know that more black people and women are handicapped than white men, and because I probably also feel 'why make buildings suit the needs of blind people since they are incapable of living normal productive lives within society?'

Suddenly everyone on the train is staring at me, and I am now in the unenviable position of having to defend my fairly straightforward position regarding handicapped accessibility within the broader mine field of issues on which I have not taken a position.

True, this is not a perfect analogy since the target of this blogger's rant did blend the issues of immunization and child abuse.  But the blogger is no longer speaking to this woman.  She is speaking to a large audience that is confused as to what is actually making her angry. 

If the topic under discussion is vaccination, I'm sure the blogger could have easily mentioned that there is a woman in her community who frequently makes pronouncements about how wrong-headed any parent is that opts not to vaccinate their children.  I'm sure this would have generated a lively thread of discussion that would have aired most, if not all of the relevant positions.

The same can be said of child abuse.  If the intention was to trigger a discussion of people's insensitivity to the plight of victims of child abuse, then it would have been just as easy to have brought up the original context within which the offending remark was made, and then say something to the effect of "Without going in to my position on mandatory vaccination, I find it extremely troubling that this woman threw around the term 'child abuse' in such a thoughtless manner."

But by blending the two issues together, it became nearly impossible to express an opinion about mandatory vaccination without seeming to side with the woman who had misused the term 'child abuse'.

In short, don't invite me over for dinner and then serve up a a big slice of 'sacred cow' that I will feel guilty about eating.

If you would like to take part in the discussion where it originated, please go visit Aidel Maidel.  But I am also curious to know if anyone else is conflicted over the blending (deliberate or otherwise) of unrelated issues.