A matter of belief and principles: reasonable tolerance (vegans)

I know of a couple, in their fifties now, who have been happily married for well over twenty years. The female of the couple is a Catholic, and the male is Jewish.

I know of another couple, married for only a few years now, who are also happy. This female is also Catholic, and the male is an atheist. Militant, well, sort of, actually.

My best friend is dating a vegan. He is, like most people, an omnivore. He recently got in a rather large fight with his girlfriend regarding the issue of eating meat and she almost left him because of it.

Now, I thought that was absurd, and cited the first two couples mentioend to demosntrate that fact. But today the thought struck me: is this reasonable? Which of the couples are reasonable?

I would not marry a single mother who beat her child by simply saying, “Well, I do not beat the child, and that is all that really matters.” I would not be friends with someone who owned a slave and tell myself, “So long as I do not have a slave, that is what is important.” And from what I understand the notion behind being a vegan is that using animals as a food source is inherently cruel. So why should I expect a vegan to tolerate my eating of meat? In what way would I consider that reasonable if I accepted their reasoning and/or assumptions? It would seem that they would be a hypocrite if they did anything else. Wouldn’t it?

But then I wonder, why should a Jew tolerate a Catholic? It seems unimaginable in the context of religious truth. Can we assume that they aren’t practicing their religion if they live together?

In my mind, it seems, all three couples cannot be “reasonable” simultaneously. Are they?

I live with several vegans in a group housing situation. They are really wonderful people and they are very tolerant, but there are limits to their toleration. This is something I understand. You bring up a good point in comparing the situation to having an abusive mother or a slave owner as a potential long term partner.

As I said, the vegans I live with are very tolerant of other people’s eating habits and have no problem being good friends with people (like me) who do eat animal products, but none of them could have a serious relationship (read potential spouse) with someone who wasn’t vegan. Or in any case their potential spouse would have to be extremely conscious and conscientious about their eating habits.

I really don’t like it when people are intolerant because it cuts you off from other people. But when you get down to who you plan to spend the rest of your life with, who you are going to discuss your problems with after work, it does seem like you have to be picky.

It seems that if you hold strong moral beliefs about something you really can’t expect to be happy marrying someone who transgresses those beliefs unless one of you changes. Or maybe not, I don’t know. This is just a guess.

The issue here is tolerance. Maybe the Catholic wife doesn’t agree with the atheist husband’s views on religion. Does she demand that he change to suit her? Apparently not. I guess these couples are only unreasonable if the ideologies they follow actively discourage relations with those having dissimilar beliefs.

insensitivity level rising:
Besides, if we aren’t supposed to eat animals-- why are they made out of meat!? :smiley:

It’s the difference between an absolute morality, and accepting that other people might live with a different moral code than you.

IMO, a spouse who eats meat would bother me much less than one who was a jerk, made me cry or get upset often, who had problems with honesty, or who didn’t respect me. (note: I am imagining I am a vegan… confirmed omnivore here). The thing about veganism is that it is really a radical moral/political position, and most people in the world do not ascribe to its tennets. So, either you truly are mad at most of the rest of the world, or you accept other people for who they are, and accept that they look at things a little differently than you.

That being said, it’s all really about what’s important to you. If someone else’s faith is more important to you than love, you wouldn’t marry someone of a different faith. If someone else’s views on the rights of animals to not be eaten by people and to not have any of their “products” co-opted by people is more important to you than love, then don’t marry someone who isn’t vegan.

But, if that’s true, it’d also be respectful and responsible of you to not get into a relationship with someone of different views. If you know you can’t be long term with someone who eats meat, it’s not fair to get involved with an omnivore and then blow up at him/her later because of it.

My wife is vegan. I am an omnivore. She is Atheist. I am Muslim.

waits for general shock…still waiting…coughs nervously…anyways!

In my case, i was the one bothered by her being vegan. It just seemed stupid to me (i’ve only met 3 vegans in my life so far here being one of them) because of her reasons. I could understand not eating meat. But depriving yourself of delicious cheese, butter and yogurts? HERESY!!!

Anyways, she told me that those animals lived in awful conditions so i backed off. (But aren’t there some farms where the animals actually live happy and eat grass and all that?

I grew used to it and the only things that still bothers me today is that she can’t always enjoy a good meal when we go to certain restaurants (I love sushi…) and that most of my delicious native country’s dishes have meat in them so she will never be able to try them.

but i’m waaaaay off topic here. (How did i manage?)

She has no problem with me eating meat, never really tried to “convert me” and she even buys and cooks meat for me. I WIN! HAHA!

If you ask me, it’s the same for inter-religious couples. you just respect your partner’s beliefs (it’s really not hard). Believe it or not, i was going to submit this reply when i realized that we also had different religious beliefs. We never even discuss it. It’s that easy to forget…

children are another issue if you are from different religions. what do you raise them to be? I am happily ignoring this whole issue on the basis of my young age and my lack of maturity.

First couple - Jew & Catholic

I would have to imagine that they were not practicing at least one of their religions. It seems totally incongruous to me to, on one hand, go to your temple on Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement) and ask forgivness for your sins of the previous year, and then turn around and go to church on Easter to celebrate the resurrection of one who died so that your sins would be forgiven. You cannot, IMHO, logically have both. If, OTOH, one or both are not practicing (and don’t believe in the concept of Yom Kippur or the Crucifixtion) then they would be as two athiests or agnostics.

Second couple - Catholic & Athiest

With this couple too, there shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Again, you have to ask the question of just how religious the woman is. If her religious faith is really strong, I don’t see how she could live with someone who doesn’t accept Jesus as their Saviour. Could you, in good conciense, live with someone as husband and wife when you know that they are doing wrong every minute? With regard to him, he’s being perfectly rational. To him, this is a superstition. He wouldn’t reject her if she threw salt over her shoulder every time she spilled it.

Third couple - Vegan and meat-eater

With this third couple, you have to ask this question: why is she a Vegan? Is she a Vegan because she simply believes it to be a more healthy lifestyle; or is she a Vegan because she believes that eating meat and using animal products is fundamentally wrong. If the former, then that couple is being reasonable. It would be no different from an exercise freak marrying a lazy person. If the latter is true, however, then they may have problems. I know, from personal experience, I could not stand by and watch my wife eat a cheeseburger every day. Since I hold that (for Jews) such an action is fundamentally wrong, I could not sit back in silence and watch it happen every day. I suspect the same may be true here. If they are OK with this, then one of two things is probably true: (1) she may not really believe it is fundamentally wrong (even if she’s unwilling to do it herself) or (2) she is willing to overlook fundamental wrongs committed by her life partner (which, if she has a conciense, I doubt would be true).

Zev Steinhardt

This is one of the many reasons why I am not married. I simply could not tolerate anyone who wasn’t me.

Gozu, :slight_smile: I didn’t want to be the first to mention it, but in my friend’s case that was exactly what she said: “How would we riase our children, if we had any?” She would not accept them being anything other than raised vegan.

Now, I don’t understand not wanting to eat meat, either, but I also don’t understand how they get the graphite in the pencils (;)) so I’m not going to say that that lack of understanding implies her craziness, and the more I think about why she is a vegan, the more I think that she is being perfectly reasonable.

I eat meat because I like to eat meat, not because I have a principle which says I should eat meat. She doesn’t eat meat because she has a principle that she shouldn’t eat meat.

[reiterates slavery bit]

So I am beginning to understand her view. FWIW, she is tolerating the whole affair now much like the other couples mentioned, but I am beginning to wonder if maybe she was right in the first place (given that the very act of using animals in such a way constitutes real cruelty etc).

I am not trying to directly compare being a vegan with being a [religious group member], but rather saying that both do come with some rather stiff assumptions about behavior and truth and justice and so on, and that it has always seemed normal for me to tolerate the existence of Christians (for example), but the thought of veganism sort of irritates me (or, for that matter, making animal cruelty a felony offense!).

Now we have four people who seem irrational. I don’t know much about Catholicism, but shouldn’t the Jew be headed straight for Hell in the afterlife? If not, then let us construct a hypothetical couple wherein both of their belief systems dicate that their partner is going not going to be rewarded/go to hell/be reincarnated as a fly/etc. Are they being reasonable by living together and loving one another?

It seems one thing to tolerate Christianity from the comfort of my own atheism, but I don’t have to live with one. All the moe strange, I have dated people from a few different backgrounds, some more serious than others, and in fact it never did come up. Does this mean our respective religious beliefs were simply not that strong?

There seems no room for tolerance in a belief system which dictates such absolutes as “We are right” and “all animal products are produced by cruelty”. I call Christianity a belief because I don’t “know” it. But I expect a Christian to know their God exists (else why else are they a Christian??). So how can one live and marry someone who deliberately and willfully denies that truth?

[reiterates slavery issue again]
Some issues seem so clear cut, and others seem clouded by tolerance. But if my belief system held that using or otherwise obtaining animal products invariably caused or was preceeded by acts of cruelty, I do not know if I could share the same bed as someone who would do such things. It would make me sick!

Now I feel like there is only one unreasonable person here: me! :frowning:

Zev, I think you’ve over looked the fact that he could go to temple without his wife, and she could go to church without her husband.

Also, regarding the meat-eater and vegan, I agree with everything you say up until the parenthetical at the end: “which, if she has a conciense, I doubt would be true.”

I think this really depends on how you define “fundamental wrong.” If that means, “something you can’t live with,” then yeah, you’re right. Why, though, could someone not live with “fundamental wrongs” being committed by his/her loved ones? If one could think of good reasons why someone else might not accept one’s personal definition of fundamental wrongs, might that one not be able to accept those acts being done by others?

**

Yes, I did overlook that possibility. However, if they do go to temple/church without each other, and they truly believe in what thier religion represents (i.e. the church/temple is not just a “social club” to them), thenI don’t see how they can, in an intellectually honest fashion, be together.

When people get married (and maybe I’m just projecting my view on to everyone else), they usually want to get married to someone who has the same outlook on life, the same goals and ideas about the world in general. If their religion is truly important to them, then I don’t see how she could overlook his not accepting Jesus as a saviour, nor can I see his overlooking her deification of Jesus as a part of the Trinity.

By “fundamental wrong” I mean something that is so basic that the thought of one’s loved ones committing it could put irreperable strain on the marriage/relationship.

We can agree that murder is fundamentally wrong, can we not? I know that I could not live with my wife if she committed a cold-blood murder. I could not live with my wife if she were a traitor to the United States. To me, these are examples of “fundamental wrongs.” These are things that are just too much to overlook in a relationship. If the Vegan truly believes that the act of eating meat is such a “fundamental wrong” (say, akin to murder) then how could she, in good conscience, remain with him?

Zev Steinhardt

**

You’re making a false assumption here. You’re assuming that the only reason people keep to their religion is because of some eternal reward. If this were true, then your couple would be rational, simply choosing to take the benefits of the here and now at the expense of the hereafter – much like a person who is getting drunk. They know that they are going to have a hell of a hangover later, but the drinking now feels good.

However, for most religious people, the eternal reward is NOT the reason for keeping the religion. They keep their religion simply becuase they believe that it is the right thing to do and the proper way to lead one’s life. That being the case, IF the religions were completely incompatible (as is the case of Judaism and Christianity) then the couple would be either irrational or willfully blind.

**

Possibly. Just to give a personal example, I would never have even considered dating a non-Jew, simply because I knew that I could never marry one. To me it made that much of a difference, simply becuase I wanted to set up a Jewish household and raise a Jewish family, something that would have been impossible with a non-Jewish woman. That’s how strong my conviction was in the matter.

Zev Steinhardt

In regards to the vegan thing, I suppose I see your point.

As to the Catholic/Jew, I guess I’d just point to the number of individuals I know who are in mixed marriages and say that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I’m sure that if someone were very strongly Catholic or very strongly orthodox (I’m not sure which “branch” of Judaism you belong to) a mixed marriage would have very little chance of succeding. However, I don’t think you can say that just because someone is willing to accept a spouse of a different faith that somehow their religion isn’t truly important to them. To be honest, I don’t see that being much different than telling someone, “well, you can’t be my best friend 'cause you’re not Jewish/Catholic/whatever.”

Now, if kids came into the picture I can see it being a more sticky situation.

I make no assumptions as to why people have the religious belief they do, zev, only that the religion clearly states that something will happen after death. Don’t read into that statement! :slight_smile:

It is a fact that a Jehovas Witnesses believe that Hell is not a place but a state of non-existence. To a Jehovas Witness, it is a fact that those who do not accept Christ etc will exist in a state of non-existence for eternity after death (or judgement day or whatever). I don’t care why they feel that way (in this thread), only that they do; ie- that they consider it a fact.

If it was a fact that most of your food-based behavior was founded in acts of cruelty, why would it be reasonable for me to live with you?

But it seems you pretty much agree with me otherwise, given your posts.

Clearly, like most people, your religious couple friends are not totally dogmatic in their beliefs, and therefore they have room for tolerance.

If I were zealously religous (say Catholic) I would be scared poopless every day about the prospect of burning in hell. I would definitely devote my life to living as piously (or whatever my religion demanded) as I could and I would try my hardest to convince the people I cared about that they better straighten up too. If I couldn’t, it would probably be splitsville. Some people are that way, and you can’t really blame them. If you really thought it would keep you out of hell, wouldn YOU give away all your possessions and devote yourself to living the holy life?

Athiests have it easier. They (we) believe that rules should exist to make people (and perhaps animals and plants) live together more harmoniously. The penalty for breaking an athiest’s personal rules is up that particular athiest, and so some athiests can live with “offenders” and some can’t.

I went vegetarian after nine years of marriage, and some years after that, went vegan. Mrs. M has remained a meat-eater. So what? We’re more in love than ever after all these years. She cooks me delicious vegan food.

I do not see these religions as being in conflict with each other. God already promised the jews heaven. Jesus is the path for non-jews. Neither is really in conflict with the other. There are of course differences in things such as someones adherence to being “kosher”, but they are things that could be compromised on fairly easily without doing any religious harm to either. As for the children there would be no harm in allowing them equal exposure to each religion so that they can settle on what feels right to them.

But then I wonder, why should a Jew tolerate a Catholic? It seems unimaginable in the context of religious truth. Can we assume that they aren’t practicing their religion if they live together?

In the case of both couples, I’d say yes, we can assume that.

Marriage outside the faith is a no-no with Catholicism, and Judaism as well I think. How can you say that you follow the “rules” of your religion when you deliberately go against them? It’s not like you can “accidentally” marry someone.

insensitivity level rising further:
Besides, if we aren’t supposed to eat people-- why are they made out of meat!? :smiley: **

I am vegetarian, though not as committed as I’d like, and am extrapolating to vegans:

Most vegans consider it wrong to eat/use/kill any animals at all, but have to compromise since this ideal is impossible to achieve. [Amateur psychologist] We have to be blocked out, the same way we do foriegn starving children. [/psychologist] Some people will see marrying a non-vegan an acceptible compromise. Some will not.

No, it’s not. Who told you that?

I’m a Catholic marrying a non-Catholic in a Catholic church, with the Church’s blessing. Wanna see the letter? The Church recognizes such weddings, has for years. Indeed, we were quite specifically told it would be sinful to coerce our spouses into converting.

Not true, although it is a cause for circumspection:

From the Catechism:

Again, nuffle, don’t proceed with the assumption that religious folks all follow their religion out of fear of hell. Reread what zev said above.