What? No Christmas ham?

A WA hospital has scrubbed baked ham from its Christmas menu, fearing Muslim patients could be offended.

It has also overhauled its entire menu so that all meals are now halal – containing only meat and other food prepared according to Muslim customs.

But Port Hedland Regional Hospital staff and many non-Muslim patients are outraged, saying it is a case of political correctness gone mad.

Kitchen staff are so angry that they have organised a petition demanding ham be put back on the Christmas menu.

Other WA hospitals are also introducing halal dining, though the Health Department says Port Hedland is the only one to convert its entire menu to suit Muslims.

Furthermore, taking pork off the menu will not be enough to avoid giving offense, as it is inherently offensive to be served non-halal meat!

I'm a little tired of a shrill minority of offended people demanding that the majority conform to their standards. If they get their way and succeed at forcing institutions to discontinue serving pork, mark my words: they'll up the ante and demand that no meat that isn't halal be served. To anyone!

I think the best way to combat this nonsense is with proactive food satire. If the words are so offensive, why not just serve the pork anyway, but change the descriptive words on the menu to "Traditional Christmas Halal ham"? After all, it's all based on words anyway. Even the prohibition on ham.

(And, as we all know, words are not truth!)

What I'd like to know is why vegetarians (especially Hindus, who are vegetarian for religious reasons) don't also enjoy the right to not be offended.

And what about people who find halal slaughtering methods offensive? Don't they too have a right not to be offended?

From where derives this right to not be offended? What is it that constitutes offending sensibilities? The Koran prohibits a lot more than eating pork, and if eating pork in a hospital is offensive, then why wouldn't homosexual visitation rights in the same hospital be just as offensive?

So what if people are offended? There are plenty of things that offend me, but my being offended does not give me the right to compel anyone not to do that which is offensive -- as long as they're not harmful to me. Does a vegetarian have any more "right" to be offended by meat eating than a meat eater does by vegetarianism? I don't see why, but these are issues of morality and not logic.

Years ago in Berkeley, a friend was searching for a room to rent, and there were a number of vegetarian households which advertised that fact. My friend was a meat eater, but he didn't mind living with vegetarians, not eating meat in the household, and not bringing meat into the household. But when he was asked whether he might eat meat elsewhere, he was honest enough to tell them that he would. They refused to rent to him -- because the fact that he might still eat meat somewhere was offensive to them. At that point my friend no longer wanted to live with them, but I never forgot the illogical nature of it. In a household situation, of course, people are free to be that way. But there's something about the human need to control others which can lead vegetarians to demand vegetarianism from the whole world. And they're not even religious; they're just thinking along the lines of "the world would be a better place if everyone did what I did." Ditto for people who don't like guns. They're not content to give up their own guns; they want mine! (By their logic, shouldn't I demand that they be armed?)

Throw in religion, and the "sensibilities" multiply. (Yeah, I guess atheists are claiming a similar right not to be offended.)

I'll tell you what offends me: it's the fact that I have to put up with being offended, while others don't!

Maybe being offensive ought to become a moral imperative.

Which makes it morally imperative that I go on the moral offensive.

Therefore, by the power vested in me as a morally offensive, um, imperator, I hereby declare that green eggs and ham are halal!

It's official, and so certified:

OK, now everyone eat!