“A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.”
— Ingrid Newkirk, President, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
As the drive for animal welfare has become activism for animal rights, many of us have glommed on to the trendy political movement, hopeful that fighting for animals will give us a sense of significance. And why shouldn’t it? Animals are cute, they're furry, and God called us to be faithful stewards over His creation. So what trouble could there be between the Christian worldview and the animal rights movement? The trouble all comes down to the above statement: “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.”1
Though voices for a wider ecological perspective are emerging in Christian circles, the major force behind the animal rights movement remains the belief that animals are equal to mankind in significance and stature — that we all (meaning birds, beasts and men) carry within us an equal spark of nature’s divine fire. In the Dec. 12, 1996, issue of Time Magazine, Paul Harrison, author and winner of the United Nation’s Global 500 Award, gave a succinct description of Pantheism, the religion that provides the basis for most people who hold this viewpoint: “The Universe is divine … and natural objects are carriers of that divinity … . We are part of the same family, and they are our brothers and sisters, with equal rights.”2
Sounds harmless, if nebulous, enough … until one considers the implication of this philosophy.
Under such pantheism, nature has no moral hierarchy. Even if the death of an animal might provide the vaccine to rescue someone from the living nightmare of cancer or AIDS, we don’t have the right to use our fellow “god-carriers” to find it. As PETA’s website puts it, “Helping animals is not any more or less important than helping human beings.”
Once regarded as a crazy notion of the radical fringe, proponents of this worldview have established a respected place in mainstream culture. Major models and actresses sign up to pose for PETA's “I'd Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur Campaign” and blockbuster films like Legally Blonde II cash in on the cause, teaching young girls that loving their dogs should make them animal rights activists too. Even the once temperate Humane Society recently issued the statement, “There is no rational basis for maintaining a moral distinction between the treatment of humans and other animals.”3
They're perfectly correct if you follow their belief system to its conclusion. If one vests all earth with a divine nature, there can’t be a rational basis for distinguishing between a person and an animal — or even a person and a blade of grass. But instead of promoting kinder treatment of animals (or lawns for that matter), the animal rights worldview has made violence against people more acceptable, as recent events seem to indicate.
In England, the managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences, a drug-testing facility that uses animals to test drugs for safety before they are tested on people, was badly beaten by three assailants wielding baseball bats,4 and another executive was temporarily blinded when one sprayed acid into his eyes.5 On local territory, scientists at Harvard University occasionally receive letters booby-trapped with razor blades.6
The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) has a how-to guide for committing arson on their Web site,7 and one of their key members is awaiting trial in the Netherlands for murdering a political candidate who defended pig-farming.8 As for PETA, its spokesman, Bruce Friedrich, recently issued the following statement: “If we really believe that animals have the same right to be free from pain and suffering at our hands, then of course we’re going to be blowing things up and smashing windows … . I think it’s a great way to bring animal liberation, considering the level of suffering, the atrocities … .”9
Even if mainstream animal rights groups don’t participate in terrorist acts, they don’t condemn it, either. “We’re very aware of [ALF’s] activities,”10 said Heidi Prescott, national director of the Fund for Animals, an anti-hunting group in Silver Spring, Md. “[We don’t] participate in liberation, but we’re mighty happy when we hear about it.”11
PETA has even gone so far as to fund violence against its enemies. In 1995, Americans for Medical Progress obtained tax records proving that PETA gave $3,500 to the Rodney Coronado Support Committee, an ALF offshoot that was named after a member who was convicted of firebombing a research facility at Michigan State University.12 Comparing the violent ALF to the Underground Railroad, PETA President Newkirk openly admitted to contributing to the defense funds of eco-terrorists.
Destructive as this behavior and rhetoric is, even more destructive is the impact their worldview has on society. Rather than elevating trees and animals to a place of sanctity, they have helped devalue human life to a worth no greater than that of the average lab rat. The brutality this breeds ensures that we will, in one way or another, end up resembling the animal kingdom: As poll after poll has shown, most animal rights activists take pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia stances — advocating nothing less than the killing off of the weakest members of the herd.13
Think that’s a crude generalization? Then consider Princeton University’s premier bio-ethicist Peter Singer, winner of the 2003 World Technology Award for Ethics, whose book Animal Liberation is credited with launching the modern animal rights movement.14
Singer once wrote, “because people are human does not mean that their lives are more valuable than animals.”15 He not only advocates abortion but also killing disabled babies up to 28 days after they are born. In his book Practical Ethics, he wrote, “When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed … . Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Often, it is not wrong at all.”16
Most of the celebrities and college students who attach themselves to this movement give little thought to its moral implications. They don’t seem to realize that if this means we should liberate animals from suffering at the hands of humans, it also means that we should liberate animals from suffering at the hands of other animals — just like humans, sharks, tigers, eagles and other animal-hurting animals should be targeted by eco-terrorists.
Much more serious than all this, however, is the movement’s disregard for human suffering. They hardly notice that when PETA states, “the leather sofa and handbag are the modern equivalent of the lampshades made from the skins of the people killed in the death camps,” they do not make handbags seem more repugnant, they make the Holocaust seem less so.17
As Christians, our job is to show these people that there is a God who loves them, who values them more than a rat or a pig or a dog. Our job is to tell them that they are the highest priority of the true God of the universe, the God in whose image they, and they alone of all creatures, are made.
1 Vogue, September, 1989, and widely quoted since.
2 See www.peta.org, under FAQs.
3 Emphasis mine. Humane Society flier.
4 BBC News, Friday, 23 February, 2001.
5 The Independent (London), “How Threats, Firebombs and Assault are Sending an Animal Testing Lab to the Dogs,” January 9, 2001.
6 The Boston Herald, “Fur flies over radical animal rights tactics,” Nov. 7, 1989.
7 —London Daily Telegraph, “Animal activist 'meticulously planned killing,'” May 09, 2002.
http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/ELF/elf.htm
8 From the Americans for Medical Research Paper, “At the Animal Rights 2001 Conference, July 7, 2001.” www.amprogress.org.
London Daily Telegraph,
9 The Washington Times, “Animal activists add bite to effective bark.” December 26, 1996.
10 Insight on the News, “The Terrorist Tactics of Radical Environmentalists,” April 22, 2002.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid. Note that Cal Thomas’ article “Will Radicals Rule and Humans Suffer” (LA Times, June 24, 1999.) put that number at $45,200 — 15 times what PETA spent on animal shelters that year.)
13 From The Animals' Agenda. 18, no. 3, (May 01, 1998).
14 From Worldnetdaily, “Pro-infanticide prof awarded ethics prize,” July 12, 2003.
15 Practical Ethics, Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 185.
16 Ibid. p. 191.
17 From PETA’s affiliated web site www.masskilling.com, and reiterated on their “Holocaust on Your Plate” college tour last year.
Copyright © 2004 Megan Basham. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
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