"Quaker State"?
B.R. Boyd writes in The New Abolitionists (1987):
"Seventy to one hundred million, including lost and abandoned pets, are
quite literally injected, infected, mutilated, driven insane, strapped
immobile for years on end, blinded, concussed, burned, mechanically raped,
dismembered, disemboweled, mutilated, and otherwise violated--often without
adequate anesthesia--in order to test shampoos, oven cleaners, make-up, and
scientific hypotheses; to advance medical science or personal careers; to
develop and test nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional weapons; or
for general scientific curiosity, and because public funding is available.
"Twenty million unwanted pets undergo euthanasia every year and countless
others are abused by their owners. Spay-neuter clinics get little or no
public funding, while the pet-breeding industry continues to enrich itself
by pumping out living, disposable toys.
"Seventeen million wild fur-bearing animals (and twice as many 'trash'
animals) are mangled in steel jaw traps and 17 million more factory farmed,
then gassed or electrocuted, that we may wear furs.
"170 million animals are hunted down and shot to death in their habitats,
mostly for sport, often leaving their offspring to die of exposure or
starvation.
"Industrial pollution, habitat destruction, and our transportation system
kill and maim untold millions, while we kidnap and imprison others for our
entertainment in zoos.
"Ten billion animals are killed in America every year; 95 percent of them
are killed for food. We force-breed, cage, brand, castrate, and over-milk
them, cut off their beaks, horns, and tails, pump them full of antibiotics
and growth stimulants, steal their eggs, and kill and eat them."
"I have no doubt," wrote Henry David Thoreau, "that it is part of the
destiny of the human race in its gradual development to leave off the eating
of animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other
when they came into contact with the more civilized."
--
Do you feel like you're being forced to practice Quakerism, because the
government does not allow you to own a slave? Did the Quakers impose their
morality on the rest of American society when slavery was abolished or was
it social and moral progress for all mankind?
--
Animal rights should not be solely aligned with a particular political
party. Neither should they be tied to a particular religion.
In past decades, the stereotype of "religious vegetarians" was that they are
all followers of Eastern religions, believing you might be reincarnated as a
cow in your next life if you're not careful. Now people are gradually
becoming familiar with the strands of vegetarianism within Judaism, but many
are unaware of the long history of animal advocacy, concern for animals, and
vegetarianism in Christianity.
As I told Dr. Richard Schwartz (author, Judaism and Vegetarianism) via email
in 1997: arguing as some Christians do that animal rights and vegetarianism
are solely "Jewish" concerns is like saying, "It's only wrong to own a slave
if you're a Quaker."
No. Suffering and injustice concern us all. Like the abolition of slavery or
the emancipation of women, animal rights and vegetarianism are moral
absolutes and apply to everyone, including atheists and agnostics.
Richard agreed with me that churches should have animal issues at the top of
their agenda as well.
Adolf Hitler thought Albert Einstein's scientific discoveries were mere
"Jewish science" and thus not applicable to gentiles. This is the mentality
of meat-eating Christians towards vegetarianism, which they regard as a
sectarian (like circumcision) dietary restriction (like "keeping kosher"),
rather than as a universal ethic for all mankind (like abstaining from
cannibalism).
Meat-eating Christians relegating animal rights and vegetarianism solely to
Judaism are thus as bigoted as Hitler.
The sad irony here is a lot of liberals see abortion as sectarian, too! They
dismiss it as a "Catholic issue" or a fundamentalist Christian issue or say
if you're not born again, you don't have to be pro-life.
If vegetarianism were solely about "fit" or following a peculiar set of
"dietary laws" why would pro-lifers be offended by pro-choice vegetarians
and vegans?
They're offended because THEY KNOW vegetarianism involves the animals' right
to life, and thus these pro-choicers appear to value animal life over human
life under some circumstances.
And issues like animal experimentation, circuses, and fur have nothing to do
with diet, eating, nor food, but DO involve the animals' right to life.
Sometimes being lighthearted gets the point across to Christians that
vegetarianism is not about "dietary laws" but about the animals' right to
life, like Steve Martin in the '70s asking, "How many polyesters did you
have to kill to make that suit?"
Leonardo Da Vinci, Count Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, George Bernard Shaw,
Percy Shelley, Susan B. Anthony, etc. were all vegetarian, and none of them
were Jewish or Muslim.
At the end of 2007, shortly before moving to Israel, Pete Cohon of Veggie
Jews in San Francisco said to me, "PETA's not Jewish."
When I told Jim Frey of Berkeley Pro-Life that animal issues are secular and
nonsectarian and thus applicable to *everyone* including atheists and
agnostics, he said, "Well, just like with abortion."
Pro-lifers must not play a sectarian game with animal activists.
Saying, "*Your* religion says it's wrong to kill animals, mine doesn't..."
is pointless when someone from a differing denomination could just as easily
say, "Your religion says it's wrong to kill the unborn, mine doesn't." There
are pro-choice Protestant denominations, like the United Church of Christ.
As an animal advocate and a secularist, I've never understood the attempts
of pro-life Christians to unsuccessfully deflect the issues of animal rights
and vegetarianism by depicting them solely as someone else's "religious
belief" which they think doesn't apply to them.
A lot of people look at abortion that way, too, you know!
Go on to: Radical Tolerance
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