Many Iowa State diners were disgusted Thursday by anti-abortion table tents telling the disgusting tale called “2 Heathers.” The basic story is this: Two Heathers get knocked up on the same day, one gives birth prematurely and kills her baby 31 weeks after the conception while the other Heather has a partial-birth abortion.

The first one is jailed and the other is given an award by “pro-abortionists” for making a “choice.”

This message was brought to the public by YAF, Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative, right wing campus group that claims to be the “voice of freedom on campus.”

Now, nobody wants to see this kind of stuff when they are trying to eat. I seriously doubt that there are even too many pro-life, anti-abortionists who want to be reminded of the issue when they have their mouths full of scrambled eggs and salsa.

Imagine chewing on one of those sausage links they got down there in Food Service, biting into a hard chunk just as you read lines about “killing her daughter” under sideviews of gestating fetuses.

Maybe by lunchtime you could handle it, but quite frankly, most people like all of their meals to be “gross-image free.”

What exactly would possess the Department of Residence Food Service gurus to put their stamp of approval on this disgusting display? Was this the compromised second draft?

Did the first one actually have photographs of fetuses on it?

I think it’s in bad taste and not because I disagree with the message. I’ll state that up front. I’m all about abortions. When the population of your planet hits six billion and the majority of people living in poverty in the United States are children, something has to be done.

No one gets a partial birth abortion for fun. It isn’t like a day at the state fair. You don’t abort a fetus at 31 weeks because summer is coming and you want to look good in a swimsuit.

There are invariably good medical reasons to get late term abortions and even the staunchest of pro-choice advocates wouldn’t say “what the hell, go for it” a couple of weeks before the birth no matter what the opposition might like you to think.

YAF used to be much more obnoxiously vocal on campus, but in recent years they have been so quiet I forgot they even existed. But this stunt, which was apparently given the green light by the Department of Residence Food Service, is typical of their shenanigans. They have favored low-brow stunts for years.

At a gay rights rally some years back, they brought a sheep. I’m sure this was quite funny and meaningful to them. Those attending for the purposes of supporting gay rights were even more amused than the few sheep-wielding zealots.

Let’s face it, no matter what your political motivation, when you show up in public with a sheep on a leash, you look like a tool.

It raised many questions. What was the sheep supposed to symbolize? Why were we supposed to be offended by a sheep? Is protesting against gay rights really the best place to go on a first date? Which young American for freedom was dating the sheep and why didn’t he hold her (?) hand during the rally to show some affection?

We may never know the answers to these questions. Those guys graduated a long time ago. Some of them may have even moved — with or without the sheep — to a state that condones that kind of thing.

Who am I to deny true love? The sheep looked pretty happy. He or she had quite a glow about him or her and appeared to not be suffering from any outward signs of abuse.

But one thing is certain, he or she probably never took that young American home to the pasture to meet Mom and Dad.

Not to generalize or stereotype, because all sheep are different. But most of the sheep I have met, professionally, of course, are notoriously small-minded bigots.

They don’t generally believe in dating outside their species and wouldn’t stop to help a human being if they saw that person choking himself in the middle of their pasture with his pants down around his ankles.

These fellows used to make their presence felt on campus in any number of annoying ways. It seemed to be their goal to prove that the stupider the stunts, the farther right you were.

One of these guys called me a “faggot” at the bar one night. I’ve been told by more than one gay friend that I couldn’t be mistaken for a homosexual if I showed up at Wigstock dressed like Judy Garland in leather chaps.

This hurts my feelings. I may not want to go to the party, but it’s still nice to be invited.

I guess I was asking to have epithets thrown at me that night with my roommate, though.

I was flaming pretty hard sitting there talking to my roommate with no more than a two-foot space between us, drinking pitchers of beer without shame in Welch Ave. Station and watching a Sports Illustrated swimsuit special on HBO with drool coming out of my mouth.

But what could I do? The guy was there with his constant companion. They were out to kick somebody’s butt and I didn’t want to be the butt.

Just minutes prior they had accused an international student of being a communist in German. I swear to god, German.

It’s one thing to talk a good game about standing up to oppression, but when a young American starts spouting off in German, I think twice about stepping up. All I could do was laugh until beer came out of my nose.

After all, it was a pretty “Brown Shirt” thing to do — trying to start a fight in a beer hall.

More truth for you: I kind of miss those days. You can be as liberal as you want to be but if you don’t have anyone to get into it with, your convictions don’t mean squat.

That’s what I tell friends from Iowa City who like to think they are more liberal than me because they live in a town that is fairly running over with liberalism when compared to the rest of the state.

How hard is it to be a lefty when virtually everyone you meet is not only left of the dial, but proudly displaying their politics by wearing political buttons on their tie-died shirts?

No, for my money, being left wing in Ames is far better. I put my money where my mouth is every time I spout off.

So as distasteful as I might find those YAF pratts and their politics, it’s nice to know they are still hanging around.

Because at the end of the day, they do more to make liberals out of ISU students than I could ever do.

Keep up the good work guys!

But keep the gross stuff off the tables when we’re trying to eat because that’s just bad manners no matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily.