Back when the animal rights movement started, the public seemed to take two definite sides about the situation. The far greater portion of the public seemed to feel that animal rights activists were radical vegetarians firmly on the lunatic fringe. A few others assumed that the animal rights activists meant what they seemed to be saying about protecting animals from needless experimentation and from living miserable lives in abusive homes. Since that time, however, more people–including the liberal celebrities who seem to want to tell people how to live their lives–are supporting this dangerous cause.
Why is this cause dangerous? I consider this cause dangerous because at its core are people who want to take away other people’s rights and privileges. Every person currently has the opportunity to own a pet, if he or she has the financial means and if the living conditions allow it. Animals provide many people with joy and comfort when they live alone. They assist individuals with disabilities. Show dogs bring some beauty into their owners’ lives, while police and security dogs bring them a measure of safety. Even if we don’t have pets of our own at home, many of us have at least one fond memory of a neighborhood pet that would follow the kids around as they played.
But animal rights groups want to take all of that away from us. I have read that Ingrid Newkirk, the president of the People for the “Ethical” Treatment of Animals (PETA) actually wants to “free” pet animals from “bondage” so that people can “admire them from a respectful distance.” The problem with Newkirk and her deluded followers is that they want to wipe out all pets through spaying and neutering all of them, even dogs bred for police and service dogs and even dogs bred for show and work. They are for eliminating animal products from our diets and from our clothing and they even want to prevent people from using animals for medical research or for the production of insulin. The damage that these people do is shown by the trial that took place earlier this year in which the PETA workers were prosecuted for killing animals that they had taken from a veterinary clinic so that they could “place them in homes.”
Even based on that alone, these maniacs should be stopped and their organization disbanded. They go beyond that, though. PETA volunteers hand out “comic books” to children that they see at fast food restaurants or to children who have moms that wear furs. These “comic books” traumatize children with drawings of crazed knife-wielding mothers who are covered with blood and are threatening cowering bunnies. They brainwash children with the story from the Disney movie Nemo, repeating the refrain that “fish are friends, not food.” They do this brainwashing to bring in a new generation of workers who believe that what PETA says is true. Sadly, we’re already seeing the signs of what can happen when people follow Ingrid Newkirk and her propaganda without taking the time to question it. Unfortunately, the news is even worse: PETA has laundered money for domestic terrorist organizations such as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).
I think it is incredible that PETA seems to be getting more powerful, instead of less powerful. I can’t imagine how people fail to see through what they are doing. The animal rights activists are using this power to influence even the animal related laws that are being passed today. Ingrid Newkirk has vowed to see “pit bulls” exterminated–never mind that there is no such breed of dog, given that she is not talking about the American Pit Bull Terrier (APBT). Once they have manipulated people into wiping out those dogs, then I believe that they will move on to other breeds.
Knowing what Newkirk said about the “pit bull,” I think that it is obvious that PETA and other radical animal rights organizations such as the Doris Day Animal League and the Humane Society for the United States are behind the legislation in places like Louisville, Kentucky and the state of California. These locations have laws that call for mandatory spaying and neutering of all but certain classifications of animals, including show dogs and other registered competition dogs, service dogs, or working dogs. The California legislation would only make these exceptions until 2009, after which all dogs over the age of four months would need to be spayed or neutered.
I think that it is pretty obvious what will happen after that, at least to the thinking person. After a few years, there will be no replacement dogs for pets, save for those that are taken from the shelters–many of which have animals that are imported to fill their cages with small to medium-sized dogs, since the laws we currently have are working. Since many shelters do not let dogs leave them without being spayed or neutered, then from where are future generations of pets going to come? Again, I say the answer is obvious. There is no plan built into that one for allowing pets at all. Certainly that must sound familiar, mustn’t it? California is playing into the hands of the animal rights activists and their agenda, if the activists are not actually running the show themselves. I believe that it is painfully obvious that the animal rights activists have more power in certain parts of the country than they have any right to have.
The California bill is detrimental not only to private citizens, but it is also detrimental to the state of California as well. Dog fanciers spend millions of dollars every year at dog shows in the state of California alone. But with no unspayed or unneutered dogs left in the state and no provisions made for dogs that come into the state for events like shows, there will be no possibility for dog shows like what we see on television, since only “intact” dogs can compete. If California successfully passes this bill, which seems likely since there are people forcing it to go through, that sets a precedent for other states to pass similar legislation. Before we know it, it will be illegal for anyone to breed a dog.
I think that animal rights activists have gone too far. I think that it is painfully obvious that they have undue influence over the rights of other Americans who want to own a pet to enjoy and to love. I think that it is time that we find a way to stop them, or before we know it, it will be too late.
Reference
- Michelle Bamberger, Robert Oswald ‘The real cost of fracking : how America’s shale-gas boom is threatening our families, pets, and food’ Boston, Massachusetts : Beacon Press, 2014
- William J Wynn ‘It’s the law! : pets, animals, and the law’ Sun City, Ariz. : Doral Pub., 2002.