Wow. Here's an angle that's out of outer space with the health care debate. The fat pride movement is pissed off at the language of the debate. Article is here.

Marilyn Wann is an author and weight diversity speaker in Northern California who has a message for anyone making judgments about her health based on her large physique. “The only thing anyone can accurately diagnose by looking at a fat person is their own level of stereotype and prejudice about fat,” said Ms. Wann, a 43-year-old San Franciscan whose motto in life is also the title of her book: “Fat! So?”

Hers has been an oft-repeated message this summer and fall by members of the “fat pride” community, given that the nation is in the midst of a debate about health care. That debate has, sometimes awkwardly, focused its attention on the growing population of overweight and obese Americans with unambiguous overtones: fat people should lose weight, for the good of us all.
Heavier Americans are pushing back now with newfound vigor in the policy debate, lobbying legislators and trying to move public opinion to recognize their point of view: that thin does not necessarily equal fit, and that people can be healthy at any size.
Extra weight brings with it an increased risk of chronic disease, medical experts say, and heavier people tend to have medical costs that are substantially higher than their leaner counterparts. As a result, Congress is considering proposals in the effort to overhaul health care that would make it easier for employers to use financial rewards or penalties to promote healthy behavior by employees, like weight loss.
Other less-scientific arguments have also gained traction on blogs, chat shows and editorial pages since talk of the overhaul began in earnest, with the overweight cast as lazy or gluttonous liabilities and therefore not entitled to universal health coverage because of poor personal decision-making. As that thinking goes, a healthful eater should not have to pay for the consequences of someone else’s greasy burger binges.
Either way, heavy people — characterized as over-consumers of health care or as those who should miss out on discounts because of their size — say they have been maligned throughout the debate.
“I thought, ‘Health reform? Yay!’ ” said Lynn McAfee, the director of medical advocacy for the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, an advocacy group for heavy people. But Ms. McAfee said it was not long before her sentiment changed to the more sober, “Oh no, we’re being scapegoated again.”

It is an uphill battle. But the health care debate has, unexpectedly, also provided an opportunity for new expressions of what Ms. Wann calls “fat pride,” the notion that weight diversity is a good thing and that size discrimination is as offensive as any other kind.

“The stigma is so heavy a burden that it took our community 40 years before it could go to Capitol Hill and lobby for ourselves,” said Ms. Wann, a member of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, an advocacy group that organized a lobbying trip to Washington for its members this spring. “We’re kind of a popular punching bag. You can do incredibly discriminating, hurtful, hateful things to fat people in public and not only get away with it but be seen as some kind of superhero.”

I have conflicted thoughts on this movement. On one hand, I think that everyone should be treated with respect and human dignity. On the other, I think the fat acceptance movement is the equivalent of a three year old putting their fingers in their ears and shouting "I don't want to hear it!" I am not about to enable a lifestyle choice that's making the obesity epidemic explode.