Posted on 02/03/2003 3:58:00 AM PST by Bad~Rodeo
In case you havent noticed, animal rights militants have become increasingly active. For instance, last year the California Milk Advisory Board ran what has become known as the "happy cows" television ad. They featured singing, wisecracking dairy cows contentedly munching grass in bucolic bliss. Viewers loved them, but the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sued, claiming the ads violated consumer protection laws. Why? Because they deceive consumers about the way cows actually live. (Note to PETA: Cows dont really sing, either.)
PETA members also got upset over the "Chicken Challenge" at an Illinois casino, where customers were invited to play tic-tac-toe against chickens. PETA said the game "disrespected chickens."
In Phoenix, a teacher threatened to sic her classroom of six-year-olds on a seafood restaurant. She wanted the owner to stop its "cruel" practice of putting live beta fish on display in fish bowls. The fish were ultimately put up for adoption.
You have to laugh at stories like these. But the influence of animal rights advocates has been growing, their agenda is dangerous, and thats no laughing matter. Americans and Europeans alike are passing laws that do more than just protect animals. In Germany, for example, last year a law was passed declaring that animals have the same rights as humans.
Now, some changes in how animals are treated on farms and in labs may be needed. But more than just humane concerns drive the modern animal rights movement. They have a serious agendaone that challenges Christianitys most fundamental doctrines.
The real reason they are opposed, for example, to killing animals or using them in medical research is that they dont believe that there is any fundamental difference between animals and humans. The idea that humans are special in any way is called "speciesism," defined as a prejudice akin to racism and sexism. PETAs Ingrid Newkirk even compares eating meat to the Nazi Holocaust and says that the animal rights movement is "at great odds" with Christian teaching. Indeed.
Ominously some animal rights activists carry their logic to extremes: that if its "murder" to kill chicken, for instance, its morally acceptable to stop the "murderer." In National Review Online, Wesley Smith writes about animal rights terrorists who employ "death threats, fire bombings, and violent assaults against those they accuse of abusing animals." For example, writes Smith, one such group, Animal Liberation Front, "posted a how-to-commit-arson manual on its website."
These people are seriousand dangerous in more ways than one. Charles Oliver of Reason magazine puts it well: "By placing chickens and Jews on the same ethical plane"as Newkirk does"animal rights activists may inadvertently make it easier for a future Hitler to herd millions of humans into gas chambers."
Oliver is right. The philosophy behind the animal rights agenda is an assault on human dignity. As Christians, we have a moral duty to respect the animal world as Gods handiwork, treating animals with "the mercy of our Maker," as Christian writer Matthew Scully writes in his new book, Dominion.
But mercy and respect for animals are completely different from rights for animalsand we should never confuse the two.
Compliments I love beef. com
Chicken challenge. I think that's clever. Had it been a trick carried out by cats or dogs PETA wouldn't have cared, because they are pets.
Reference anyone?
Wrong. PETA and their ilk consider pets to be SLAVES.
This is the essential point of it. If not animal rights or environment they would push some other agenda (abortion?). But this does go against the "... multiply and subdue the earth" commandment.
These globalist forces know that Christianity must at least be co-opted into the coming "world religion", or destroyed. They figure the other religions will eventually be assimilated; as indeed mainstream or lukewarm Christianity will be. They may also be wrong about some Islamicsts.
Are the German's going to put cats on trial for murdering birds and mice?
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