'Squeaky Clean' Teens Spew Intolerance
What has 20 years of social conditioning against personal choice wrought? For two college students in Utah, it meant savage beatings at the hands of a violent group known as Straight Edgers, whose members shun alcohol, caffeine, tobacco and meat and try to force others to do the same.
"[T]hey use violence to enforce their moral standards on others," professor Walter Williams recently wrote of this young activist cabal.
Straight Edgers are teens who have taken to heart the zealotry and slogans of anti-choice crusaders and combined them with the unguided exuberance of youth - with frightening results.
They have been linked to the firebombing of a McDonald's restaurant and a leather crafts store and the pipe bombing of a mink feed cooperative. In a particularly gruesome assault, they even carved their "X" symbol into the back of one victim.
For the most part, the media ignores the Straight Edgers' violent acts. Reports focus instead on their "squeaky-clean lifestyle." In a recent profile of the movement on ABC's "World News Tonight," a school guidance counselor lauded the Straight Edgers, saying, "I think that if [the students] can find something constructive and positive to join with, I think that's really important."
The Straight Edgers' "moral crusade" against caffeine, meat, alcohol and tobacco didn't develop in a vacuum. It was nurtured by activist groups such as PETA, which have been indoctrinating school children with anti-choice messages for years and are still at it.
