I quit eating meat in 1976, the same year I turned fifteen, came out, and went to my first gay rights rally (not in that order). When I say that I 'came out,' I mean that I resolved to never lie about my love for women, never deliberately pass for straight, and never deny a lover by calling her 'him.' To do so, I felt, would be to betray not only the women I desired, but my deepest self.My decision to quit meat was equally simple. Somehow, through the confluence of midseventies influences, I knew that vegetarianism was a particularly healthy way to eat. One day, quite suddenly, I realized: If I didn't need to eat meat to stay alive, then eating meat was killing for pleasure. I couldn't live with myself, wouldn't be the nonviolent person I believed myself to be, if I killed other beings--beings who had their own desires--merely to satisfy my desire for the taste of their flesh.Looking back, I see that both decisions, coming out and quitting meat, are about the interplay of desire and integrity. Sometimes integrity means being true to your desires, and sometimes integrity requires you to refuse your desires. I also notice that both decisions were about bodies and consent. A primary tenet of gay liberation is that what consenting people do with each other's bodies is nobody else's business. And, of course, eating meat is something you do to somebody else's body without their consent.

Elissa became aware that she had both hands held out in front of her, as if to push the sight away, as if to make it not real, not true, not THERE. She'd known they were doing something awful to Lin, to the others, but she'd never imagined something like this. Never imagined there were shutting them away in the dark, trapped and drowning, every moment waiting for the pain that would tear through them when the ship went into hyperspeed.A memory pierced her. "You said the others -other Spares- were taken away. It was this. It was for this." Lin's face turned to her, as pale as that of the dead Spare. In the dim room, her eyes were black hollows. Her jaw was slack with shock. "NO," said Cadan. "No. It cant be. This cant be what they-" He broke off. "Oh, G-d in heaven, hyperdrives last five to seven years."For a moment Elissa didn't pick up on what he meant. Then it hit her, a huge fist clenching her hers stomach. "SEVEN YEARS? That's how long he's been there?""No. Not this one. The PHOENIX is only two hears old. This one - somethings been malfunctioning all along. He must-" Cadan choked again. "Ah, G-d what have I been doing to him?""Two years." Elissa found her head turning back toward where the Spare floated, limp and helpless. Out there, in all the other spaceships, other Spares were floating in the same way, kept alive by tubes, kept - Oh G-d, were they conscious the whole time?As she looked, unable to turn away, other details revealed themselves, details she didn't want, things she didn't want to know could happen anywhere, EVER.

Oh, yes, yes, I bless you in my own name, and in the name of three generations of irreproachable men, who say through me, "The edifice which misfortune has destroyed, Providence may build up again." On seeing me die such a death, the most inexorable will have pity on you. To you, perhaps, they will accord the time they have refused to me. Then do your best to keep our name free from dishonour. Go to work, labour, young man, struggle ardently and courageously; live, yourself, your mother and sister, with the most rigid economy, so that from day to day the property of those whom I leave in your hands may augment and fructify. Reflect how glorious a day it will be, how grand, how solemn, that day of complete restoration, on which you will say in this very office, 'My father died because he could not do what I have this day done; but he died calmly and peaceably, because in dying he knew what I should do.''My father, my father!' cried the young man, 'why should you not live?' - 'If I live, all would be changed; if I live, interest would be converted into doubt, pity into hostility; if I live, I am only a man who has broken his word, failed in his engagements - in fact, only a bankrupt. if, on the contrary, I die, remember, Maximillian, my corpse is that of an honest but unfortunate man. Living, my best friends would avoid my house; dead, all Marseilles will follow me in tears to my last home. Living, you would feel shame at my name; dead, you may raise your head and say, "I am the son of him you killed, because, for the first time, he has been compelled to break his word.