When in Rome...Make Your Own Choices

Many people that dislike Straight Edge or SxE people say that we shouldn't push our beliefs on them, that we should not make a statement about what we don't do. I think this is a rather limited and thoughtless way to think. This usually comes about when people talk about music, they feel that SxE bands don't have to talk about not drinking all the time. To me they just don't see their own music for what it is. Just listen to a Dropkick Murphy's album (I love them, so I'm not bashing them, just using them for a demonstration here) or many of today's rap albums and hear the amount of lyrics devoted to drinking and promiscuous sex. But I guess since everyone's doing it then it's okay. When in Rome do as the Romans do, right? Seems to me that when something is right in front of you and it's something you like, you don't notice how often it's slammed down your throat, or how much society tells you that it's okay. It's our choice to be Straight Edge, and when you listen to a SxE band and get annoyed for them saying they're Drug Free, it's your choice to turn it off. The same people that slam SxE are the same people that scream Freedom of Speech when Imus said crap on the radio. If you'd rather listen to people sing about getting drunk or f*cking hos, then that's your business. Me, I'd rather listen to something positive and uplifting, and now I think it's time to listen to some old school Youth of Today.

Anti-Choice?

While reading some things on the net the other day I came across someone slamming Straight Edge as anti-choice. That to me seems completely absurd. If anything SxE is about choice. It's my choice to be poison free and to choose to not drink. People that say that SxE is anti-choice are just pissed because they can't be strong enough to make a choice other than to be a sheeple and follow the crowd. They are jealous of people that make choices different from theirs.
Sure their are some Edgers that try to force their beliefs on others, but there are FAR MORE non-edgers forcing their beliefs on others to drink, smoke, and do drugs. But it's easier to point fingers at the minority and the different than to look inside and realize one's own failures.

It takes a strong f*cking person to hold your ground. ~ Gorilla Biscuits

Now this isn't to say that people that choose to drink are failures, it's the people that don't choose and still drink that are failures, the people that drink and make excuses about it, the people that drink and try to pressure others into drinking, these kinds of people are the failures.

My Life. My Choice. My Pride.

Priorities

I went out tonight with some friends. It bothers me a little when it seems, to them, that the biggest priority of the evening is drinking. I thought the biggest priority was having a good time with friends. The quote of the evening "I don't want to go to a place to eat that also serves beer, I want to go to a place that also serves food." I don't mind going to a bar to hang out with some friends, but when we go out to eat I definitely want to go to a place with good food, especially since I don't eat fried food. Sure I understand that my choices affect my friends, but their choices affect me too. Am I being overly sensitive here, I don't know, but it's how I feel.