A Vampire Rights Amendment

Tru Blood, HBO's upcoming series, features a race of the closet vampires who are liberated from the need to snack on human blood by a synthetic variety known as tru blood. Naturally there is a Vampire Rights Amendment being debated to protect America's newest oppressed minority

A Vampire Rights Amendment? Next thing you know those blood suckers will be demanding to be called "Undead Americans" and terms like "Vampire", "Nosferatu", and the like will join the "N word" among the words we cannot say ever.

Tru Blood, based on a series of novels by Charlene Harris, is set in Louisiana. Tru Blood is centered around a romance between a psychic, human waitress named Sookie, played by Anna Paquin, and a vampire named Bill played by Stephen Moyer.

The Vampire Rights Amendment and vampires in general are opposed, of course, by the Religious Right, one of Hollywood's standard villains. "God hates fangs" indeed. And what about all of those centuries of treating people like happy meals on legs, to quote another vampire in another series.

Tru Blood, with its obvious metaphors about gays and African Americans and any other victim group, is just the latest in a line of franchises about undead blood suckers. There was the brief and unlamented Moonlight on CBS that had a vampire character who could walk in daylight solely because the show couldn't be bothered with filming at night.

Before Moonlight, there was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff series Angel. There was no nonsense about vampires being an oppressed minority in those shows. Vampires, except for Buffy's true love Angel and-later-her other lover Spike, were soulless monsters who not only fed on the blood of the living but did anything they wanted because, lacking souls, they also lacked moral sense. Buffy, who started the series as a fashion conscious high schooler, was their relentless hunter. No nonsense about a Vampire Rights Amendment here or any kind of rights. Vampires needed only one thing and that was a wooden stake where it would do the most good.

Forever Knight was a three season wonder from Canada about a vampire police detective in Toronto who saw catching criminals as his way of atoning for all the evil he had done since being turned in the 13^th Century. This attitude bemused his "sire", Lecroix, a two thousand year old former Roman General and now macabre DJ.

Modern literature is replete with blood sucking heroes, anti heroes, and villains. Anne Rice wrote many books about doomed, outcast vampires, also oddly enough set in Louisiana. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has a long running series about a five thousand year old moral and ethical vampire named St. Germain. Each St. Germain book is set in a different time period. One story may find him in ancient Rome, another in renaissance Florence, still another in 1930s Southern California.

Why do vampires, those creatures of the night, continue to fascinate.?The power, the sexual charm, the ability to live forever, and the danger all combine to attract us to them again and again, at least in film and literature. But how would we react if we would meet one in a dark alley, late at night, for real? Run? Break out the stakes? Or welcome him with an open vein?