Ah, the Peace Loving Advocacy of Animal Rights Extremists
So, while my lifestyle and lectures are based on compassion, those who refuse to stop harming animals force me to support 'eye for an eye' and 'by any means necessary' philosophies... Every woman ensconced in fur should endure a rape so vicious that it scars them forever. While every man entrenched in fur should suffer an anal raping so horrific that they become disemboweled. Every rodeo cowboy and matador should be gored to death, while circus abusers are trampled by elephants and mauled by tigers. And, lastly, may irony shine its esoteric head in the form of animal researchers catching debilitating diseases and painfully withering away because research dollars that could have been used to treat them was wasted on the barbaric, unscientific practice vivisection." 
The animal rights movement claims to be peaceable--despite the terrorists in its midst. But how peaceable can it be when so many advocates use vividly violent imagery in their advocacy. From an editorial, Animal Rights & Ethical Veganism," by one Gary Yourofsky, published in the University of Southern Indiana newspaper, The Shield. He writes:
This reads like the rantings of a very disturbed mind. But note: Yourofsky is apparently no fringe rider if this identifier is true:
Institutionalized violence doesn't simply vanish with a peaceful protest, a dose of logic and whole lotta love. If people continually deny animals their inherent right to be free, radical tactics are necessary and justified...
Deep down, I truly hope that oppression, torture and murder return to each uncaring human tenfold! I hope that fathers accidentally shoot their sons on hunting excursions, while carnivores suffer heart attacks that kill them slowly.
Gary Yourofsky is one of the nation's most outspoken and spirited activists. He has given 1,403 lectures in 27 states at 134 institutions to more than 35,000 students.
Animal rights advocates like to compare themselves to the Civil Rights Movement. Would Martin Luther King have ever written and spoken like this? Moreover, would any advocate for another movement who came so close to advocating violence ever be fought for by professors and students to be invited to speak on college campuses?
I am old enough to recall how the violent language and/or actions of groups like the Black Panthers and H. Rap Brown-types severely undercut the Civil Rights Movement that had made so much progress through nonviolent protest and love of enemies. The same thing will happen to animal rights if Yourofsky comes to epitomize the movement.
Labels: Animal Rigths Movement
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:13 AM
13 Comments
13 Comments:
Every person who believes the above should face me with a baseball bat.
Or a hand-gun.
No one should ever wish that kind of harm on any person. Even someone as sick as him, I don't wish an anal raping on, and I certainly don't think that any woman deserves to be raped under any circumstances. I'll pray for the sick sonofa..... but I hope he knows what it is he's actually saying and how that will come back to him at some point.
I assure you he does not speak for everyone who cares about animals.
And we should sew his ass shut... and then just feed him.. and feed him.. and feed him...
who's with me?!
=)
Tracy, animal rights is way out of my league, but if this guy doesn't speak for people who cares about animals, what are "animal rights" people doing to shut him up? We pro-lifers had some crazies years ago who were killing our movement by taking the law into their own hands and also saying outrageous things. We rejected those people and came out against the whole thing and have pretty much shut them up. What is your movement doing to shut up guys like him and the violent ones in your movement? Pro-lifers moved against these people because it is anti-pro-life to do what they were doing and because to be silent would make it look like we approved it. I think the animal rights people have a long way to go on this and need to crack down on people like this if they want us to believe that guys like this don't speak for them. Maybe that's happening and I don't know about it, but I haven't seen it where it counts, in media.
"If people continually deny animals their inherent right to be free, radical tactics are necessary and justified..."
I wonder if this guy isn't really just George Bush in drag? The sentiments sure sound similar, just a slight variation in the context.
Mort
Mort -
George Bush in drag?
My inner English Weenie is screaming, "Drag means wearing clothing of the opposit gender! This dude never wears anything but jeans and ugly sweaters!"
Or at least that's what he was wearing in the Penn and Teller BS episode he was taped for.
Yes, a pointless, purposless statement but if I didn't get it off my chest I was going to wig out.
Dyslexic Lit Majors of the world, UNTIE!
As a supporter of animal liberation and a sympathizer towards direct action, I find Gary's comments to be incredibly offensive. I believe his statements are misanthropic and disgusting. That being said, the things Gary suggests doing to humans is a very real reality to billions of sentient inside of factory farms, vivisection labs, and rodeos on a daily basis. Why aren't people equally offended when these terrible acts are committed against non-human animals?
123 WHO, my reading of SHS is that SHS does oppose animal cruelty and is offended by it, but does not support animal rights-as if anyone ever had a contract with an animal or held the coyotes in my neighborhood morally responsible for killing the rabbits that are infesting our neighborhood or the mountain lions who thin our deer and antelope herds. Could be wrong, but that's my reading.
A lot of groups believe in direct action. Pro-lifers do a lot of it-I don't anymore because I think it tends to hurt our movement and keep people from taking us seriously- but we do not tolerate people like Yourofsky. And we don't try to change the subject or justify them by saying, "why aren't you outraged at the barbarism against the unborn that happens inside those abortuaries?" Maybe you are or maybe you aren't doing that. We might say that we are outraged by the violence of these people just as we are of the violence to the unborn, but we are not going to not oppose our nuts with vigor.
I don't think finding his comments offensive is enough. It has to be opposed without compromising your message. I think you guys need to come out against these people and shame and oppose them like the pro-lifers did to peole who were violent in the name of our cause. It will probably work if you guys are really opposed to the things he says.
Anybody who commits or advocates violence in the name of a cause is an evil person. Suicide bombers who blow up abortion clinics are as evil as people who fire-bomb research facilities.
There's a difference between animal welfare - which says that humans have a responsibility to use animals in a humane and justified manner and *never* do unnecessary harm (which is why I prefer kosher meat, myself) - and animal rights, which says that animals are equal to humans. SHS has always advocated animal welfare and opposed animal rights.
The man's comments are grotesquely offensive. I, as a vegan, reject his view entirely. I don't know another vegan who holds his view (although I am sure some do). [I have also never heard of this fellow before.]
Violence is not a suitable way to deal with those with whom we disagree (although if he acts on his stated view, then he should be punished).
I also find several of the early responses offensive; they, like the author being attacked, apparently think we should resolve disagreements by resorting to violence.
Even Yourofsky's conceptualization of "an eye for an eye" (lex talionis) in Exodus 21 is backward. Of course, in Matthew 5, Jesus turned the notion on its head. Even in the Quran, the law of an eye for an eye urges mankind to accept less compensation than that inflicted upon him or her, or to forgive enntirely. (Quran:Surah 5, Verse 45)
Tab:
"Drag means wearing clothing of the opposit gender! This dude never wears anything but jeans and ugly sweaters!"
I really have no idea what GWB wears out cruising, but figured that this was pretty "opposite" the regular suit and tie (though that wasn't my point obviously)
Mort
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home