Something's been weighing on my mind lately. A prejudice that I feel is completely unjustified.

Why do so many people have a problem with the mentally handicapped? The mentally challenged? Why must there be some great divide between those of average (or greater) intelligence and those born with "special tendencies?" Hmm?

It really doesn't make a lick of sense to me. Truly they are not unlike you or I... their abilities vast and their accomplishments great. Long-time readers of the Blogger will recall my vacation to Mongoloid Island, their beacon of pride and a fantastic destination to get away from it all. Would an inferior group of people be able to build such a wonderful place?

There's a lot of talk about how stem cell research will eventually allow us to edit pregnancies and one day eliminate those pesky extra chromesomes all together. I can only ask, "Why?"

From my point of view, it is clear that the Down's community is alive and strong, and belongs here just as much as anybody! They're as functional as the rest of us... in fact, it's amazing how much we have in common. They have bills to pay! I see members of their community working hard all of the time... bagging groceries, collecting shopping carts in grocery store parking lots, greeting/scaring customers at Wal-Mart. Doing janitorial labor, poorly. They have jobs.

They have families, and children. Albeit, the grandparents (whose eyes are significantly farther apart than their offspring's) basically raise the kids... on welfare... but this is not a mark against these people. Like Bono says, "Sometimes you can't make it on your own." Although Bono probably didn't have retard babies in mind when he wrote that lyric, it... uh... still rings true. Right? Right.

These pea-brained folks also enjoy life in the artistic community. They're the world's leading experts in finger painting, which some consider a "dead art" but I'd beg to differ. The mentally-handicapped also have a strong presence on the stage and screen; many have appeared in major Hollywood films. That's not too shabby, eh? Certainly nothing to scoff at! And hey, who better to portray a borderline braindead character than a mongoloid? Huh? That's taking method acting to a whole other level!

The mentally-challenged are a mirror image of us. They have their own pop music (for example, Smashmouth) their own blockbuster movies (Meet The Spartans, anybody?) and even their own secret society: the ILLITERATI.

So please, my friends, don't cast these folks aside for superficial reasons. They're trying their best... and that's what counts. For all intents and purposes, they're filling their role in this world perfectly fine.

Now if they could just keep their hands out of their pants...