My daughter is allergic to peanuts.

I have to confess that the moment I found out, I was upset. Not for her, but for me. Her allergy would deprive me of one of my favorite foods: peanut butter. I got over that (mostly) and we try very hard to be careful for her sake.One of her favorite books, which we read today is The Princess and the Peanut Allergy. It is the story of two best friends fighting over a birthday cake. The one with the birthday wants to have her favorite cake and her best friend there at the same time. The friend wants to be included, but knows she can’t because of her allergy. In the end, the birthday girl chooses her friend over peanuts. It is sweet and the kind of decision I want my daughter to make on behalf of other people.

Reading it today, brought another idea up. One more to do with my selfish wish for peanut butter than it does the generous spirit of the book. The context of allergies actually means life-and-death stuff: not some simple question about politics du jour. Because here is the bigger question: should we accommodate the other or should we imprison them in their homes? Is your right to carelessness and selfishness more important than my daughter’s right to live normally and safely?

We brush this off so easily, making the parents of children with allergies work incredibly hard at determining ingredients of food and providing a safe environment for our children. And most of us get really tired of being the ones advocating for our kids constantly and having to deprive them of church dinners or parties simply because they can’t eat what is being served.

Isn’t safety more important?

The Mars Co., makers of M&Ms, is a great big company and makes a whole lot of money. But now we can’t buy any M&Ms because they all bear the warning that they may contain peanuts. Mars is a big enough company to have regular M&Ms produced in a different space from the peanut and peanut butter ones. Easy solution. But instead, we are satisfied with a warning on the package and new responsibility for the parents: “No, Baby Girl, you can’t have M&Ms anymore. I know they’re your favorite.”

The applications for this callous understanding of freedom are endless:

• the “need” to pass concealed handgun laws and then open-carry laws so that you have the right to make everyone around you afraid;
• the “importance” of seeing fairness as only applying to academic-based scholarships, which deprive needy, inner-city youth from even going to college simply because rich kids got better grades;
• allowing insurance companies to deprive coverage to anyone for any reason at all after taking their money;

and these are just the tip of the iceberg.

Some conservatives may try to spin this the other way or simply disregard me as the usual liberal calling for tolerance. So here’s the deal: it is about power. People without allergies are in a position of power and dominance over people with them. My daughter didn’t choose this. GOD isn’t punishing her because of our choices (remember, GOD promised David GOD wouldn’t do that). Like Superman, she has a weakness. So show some compassion! Don’t put peanuts in everything. It’s that simple. It is getting so easy to avoid the common allergens, that we no longer have the excuse not to accommodate them.

So quit complaining about your gun rights or your right to deprive others of healthcare or the rights of oil companies to rob you or the rights of drug companies to lie to you or use some example of some white person losing a promotion that was “theirs” to some “undeserving” minority. Just answer why is that more important than safety, health, and well-being?