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"What is Straight Edge?

The short answer is that it is a subculture centered around hardcore music. People who are straight edge do not smoke, do drugs or consume alcohol. There are no dietary or religious beliefs tied to straight edge contrary to media coverage.

The long answer requires a bit of a history lesson

In the late 1970s and early 1980s a group of bands and kids began something that grew into a movement. It would become a movement that would outlive many of their involvement in the music and the scene. They didn't know what they were doing. They knew they didn't like what was going on around them, the self destruction, the self hatred, the pain and suffering caused by the punk mentality. The ******** you and ******** the world attitude didn't make sense to them. They took a symbol that was originally used to identify them as being too young to drink so that the bartenders would know not to serve them and they made it their own. So they started setting themselves apart by wearing X's on their hands and by singing angry songs proclaiming:

"I'm a person just like you
But I've got better things to do
Than sit around and ******** my head
Hang out with the living dead
Snort white s**t up my nose
Pass out at the shows
I don't even think about speed
That's something I just don't need

I've got the straight edge"

Minor Threat wrote this song in 1980 and a name was given to what would become a movement. The basic beliefs that drugs and alcohol were not needed and should be rejected. That one should live against the grain of popular society and live by rules and standards from themselves and not the ones dictated by society...."

From www.straightedge.com

It's such an awesome movement, I'm glad to be apart of it. Remember kids: party ******** sober biggrin

sXe for life,
Sean a.k.a. garendoor