Hilarious Debate: Should Animals Be Doing More for Animal Rights?

The animal rights debate is usually so serious and weighty, and what often gets lost is any humor. That's why I've posted this hilarious video from the Onion called, "Should Animals Be Doing More for Animal Rights?" Check it out - it's not long (only about two minutes). There were several moments when I almost fell out of my chair laughing. The entire panel seems to agree that animals should be doing more to fight for their rights. The silly commentary is a terrific spoof on these inane Sunday-morning talk shows. Sadly, I can see the real-deal Talking Head Pundits saying similar things on "legit" programs. So this spoof, actually, isn't very far off.

Fighting the Good Fight in My Old Home State

Having grown up in Utah and lived there most of my life, I can vouch that states don't come much more conservative. So it was heartening to see the animal rights movement shaking things up in the old home state. Militants are targeting the University of Utah's various animal testing programs. And they're making a difference. The Davis County Animal Shelter, just north of Salt Lake City, is no longer sending animals to the U of U's research labs. Once upon a time, animal shelters provided the 150 to 200 dogs needed per year at the University of Utah. But new state laws have made it so these shelters no longer have to participate. (Source)

Kudos to the Davis County Animal Shelter for protecting its animals.

And then yesterday - in recognition of World Week for Animals in Laboratories - University of Utah students and local activists protested the treatment of animals in the university's laboratories. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) investigators detailed the abuses that occur on a regular basis inside the U of U's laboratories:

Thousands of animals are still suffering inside University of Utah laboratories. Dogs have their necks cut open and medical devices implanted inside. Cats, monkeys, and rats are forced to endure invasive experiments in which their skulls are cut open and electrodes are inserted into their brains, and mice are given enormous tumors and painful, deadly illnesses. PETA’s complaint to the U.S. Department of Agriculture alleging multiple violation of animal protection laws is still under investigation. (Source)

I have a particularly strong interest in this latest wave of protests because the University of Utah is my alma mater. And I am thrilled to see students and animal rights activists there coming together to demand an end to the terrible treatment of animals at the university's labs.

A hundred years ago today, the great American author Mark Twain died. During his lifetime, Twain often made his compassion toward animals known in his writings. He felt especially strongly about animal testing. As he once wrote, "I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't.... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."

No doubt that if Mark Twain were still alive today, he would be cheering on the protests at the University of Utah.

A Terrible Move All Around

Those of us who feel impassioned about animal rights should condemn - in no uncertain terms - the actions of the overzealous animal rights activist who threw a pie in the face of Canadian Federal Fisheries and Oceans Minister Gail Shea yesterday in Burlington Ontario. The act was apparently a protest against the seal hunt in Canada. A lot of good it did!

This sort of thuggish behaviour is unacceptable. It hurts our cause for two reasons:

# 1 - The most important reason: This movement - our movement - is about celebrating all life, and when someone throws a pie in the face of someone else, that kind of act of desperation and bullying requires that the pie thrower dehumanize the victim. Animal rights activists are not in the business of dehumanizing or bullying others or making them feel bad. We're in the business of reminding people - over and over again - that animals are not ours to abuse and exploit. Animals have dignity. A cornerstone of our movement ought to be nonviolence. We're trying to show people that there is a different, more humane way of living. What a contradiction, then, for a movement that stands for dignity and an end to the exploitation and mass murder of animals to resort to such a thuggish act as pie throwing.

# 2 - The second most important reason: An act like this one steers public attention away from the most important issue, and that is the violence that human beings engage in - on a massive and systematic and daily basis - against our fellow animals. The woman who tossed the pie, Emily McCoy, did a real disservice to the animal rights movement because now people are focused on what she did, not on the brutality of the seal hunt, which should have been banned long ago. Now a Liberal MP in Canada wants to investigate whether this pie-throwing incident was an act of terrorism. The real terrorism that the Canadian government should be investigating is the violent slaughter of seals, which is part and parcel of a larger human effort to exterminate large numbers of animals in what amounts to an unjustified and immoral mass murder. Thanks to McCoy, rather than focusing on seals, people are focusing on pie throwing. That kind of activism is counterproductive.

Years ago, a local activist named Julian Ichim threw chocolate milk on Conservative Canadian politician Stockwell Day. Do you think anybody sympathized with Ichim or paid attention to the causes he claimed to be championing when he lowered himself to such a juvenile and creepy level? No. It was a completely ineffectual act that set back whatever cause or causes that drove him to do it by several years. The same could be said of the pie-tossing incident yesterday.

The animal rights movement does not need that kind of "help."