Lisa, in my opinion, no level of prejudice against the overweight and obese is acceptable nor to any other group or individual.

I do accept that men (and women too) have personal preferences about the appearance of the people to whom they are attracted. And there are men who are attracted to large women. But to turn that around and treat people to whom you are not attracted disrespectfully, that is wrong. As I said in an earlier post, the men I work with are not attracted to me, but they do treat me respectfully. And they don't treat other large women disrespectfully or make fat jokes, etc. (and we can get pretty off-color in our joking in the office too), at least not in my presence, so it's not just me they respect.

And perhaps we should make the distinction between prejudice and discrimination except that there are two connotations to discrimination -- 1. as W.W. described it in an analytical capacity, and 2. in the same context as prejudice. I think we've been discussing discrimination in this thread in the second context where it is not acceptable.