From: Leah (216.2.233.53)
Greeting: Leah
Date: April 5, 2005 at 9:09 am PST

As of this writing (April 6, 2005), I am a college senior about to go to graduate school. Though my major is international studies with Asia concentration, I'm not sure if that's what I want to do for the rest of
my life. In any case, if you had asked me 7 or 10 years ago (I would have been 12 or 14 or so) if I would become vegetarian, I would have laughed at you. I used to love the meat, especially barbeque. I couldn't
have imagined a life without barbeque. I fancied myself an animal lover but didn't put two and two together that the cow that was my steak was the same as my pet guinea pig. One day when I was about 17, I wandered
onto the PETA site. I didn't have any particularly strong feelings about
the group, I just knew that they existed and were against eating animals. So I saw some of their slaughterhouse footage and decided that
I could not support the factory farm industry. I had always planned on going vegan but it took about two years for that to happen. So, I guess I've been vegan about two and a half years now. I think of myself as
being a rather unusual person. My hobbies are kung fu, playing the accordion, cooking, collecting American comics and Japanese manga, and watching anime. I'm also very interested in the doctrines and history of
the Catholic Church. Politically, I'm probably more to the right than most people on this site (due to the nature of my degree), though I would liken myself to a moderate like Joe Lieberman. I don't think that veganism should be restricted to a specific point on the political spectrum, because it dooms it to never being taken seriously as anything other than a eccentric habit of aging white hippies to people from the outside looking in.