I guess my problem with the definition of vegan being so fluid and broad is that, if we kept that up, sooner or later all the people who eat free range happy meat and whatnot would be calling themselves vegan, which would be a severe detriment to the movement.  We have to make these distinctions; I think they are necessary to having a unified, coherent cause.

Thanks for the compliments, rainbowdust!  My blog is very amateur, and I mostly use other people's recipes.  But I would definitely enjoy doing something more formal.  I'll have to keep that in mind.

Don't worry about hijacking it, pk.  I think we're about done.

Just to clarify, I eat about one teaspoon in total of honey a year, but I still consider myself vegan.  I really don't care about other vegans judging me because I've been over that nazi vegan police stuff for a long time now.  I would never concider myself "mostly vegetarian" and consider someone else "vegan" if they didn't eat something I did and vice versa.  It really shouldn't matter what other people do with their bodies, because people are allowed the freedom to make their own choices.  I don't know maybe I just feel attacked, like I do by most vegans, which is why I tend to not hang around with them IRL, but I really don't see what the big deal is. 

I don't allow myself honey because I am allergic to bees, I was just mentioning it because someone else did and I wanted to contribute to that part of the conversation.  I don't eat honey because I don't care about insect suffering, I just don't see the harm in eating (probably local organic) honey in bread once in a while.  I am educated (like I said before) in honey production and I agree with some of it and disagree with other things.  Personally, if I wasn't appaled at eggs (ew) I would probably eat local organic eggs as well.  But, I don't and it is not because I am afraid of not being vegan, but because they are unhealthy and pretty gross and I don't like eating them. 

I can't honestly say why I don't see honey as being gross.  Maybe it's because I have eaten countless insects while I am sleeping, just as everyone else has, and it is sort of on that level for me.

I really don't care about other vegans judging me because I've been over that nazi vegan police stuff for a long time now.  (...)  I don't know maybe I just feel attacked, like I do by most vegans

same here.  and usually i find that those are "new" vegans who were still eating meat a year ago and generally i see them eating a hamburger about a year later.  i find that most vegans i know only last about 2-5 years.  a lot of them went from eating meat straight into being an extremely strict vegan and then they go right back into eating meat again.

i don't get that.  i mean, if your convictions were strong enough to be vegan, how can that change over night? 

i think the ones that are vegetarian first probably have an easier time of sticking with it.

but among those short term vegans is my friend, peaches.  he used to tell everyone he was "more vegan" than i was (i didn't really care what he said, but whatever) because he was an extremely strict vegan.  a week before he started saying this, he was feasting on porkchops, chicken, and hamburgers!  he was vegan for about a year and a half.  the last i heard he had started eating eggs again but still didn't eat meat, dairy, or honey.  he seemed to be trying to decide if he even wanted to be vegetarian at all when i talked to him.

i've been a vegetarian for nineteen years and a vegan for eight.  when i was a little kid i always had my guard up since i had to constantly defend myself and i would always rant about how others should be vegetarian.  i got over that because i realized that it's a personal choice.  i don't like it when meat eaters try to push their views on me so i respect that and i don't push my views on them, although i am available to answer questions if they've got them.

my friend was a lot like i was when i was little.  he would rant about that to everyone, including other veg*ns (telling them they weren't doing it "well enough").  but then he dropped out of the game very quickly.  in my opinion, my (almost) two decades of being vegetarian and my eight years of being vegan (although i was not as strict, as i would occasionally eat stuff that already had honey in it) accomplished a lot more than his year and a half of being an extremely strict vegan.  i dunno, when he stopped being vegan it just made me sort of laugh to myself because of all of the crap he tried to give me over it.

If one can say honey (bee secretion) consumption  is not vegan, then one must have a similar outlook on cow maneur for organic farming and the one cell diatom which converts sunlight to energy, for example, oil.

That's a far stretch for a position.  It's interesting that so many new people have joined in on this one.  Is there another board that's sending them over?  Maybe the National Honey Board wants to show us the error of our ways.

But you were in on it, too.  So, you're probably the one on the National Honey Board, but making it look like it's ac.  You're crafty that way.