Giving Animal Lovers a Bad Name

Here’s the deal: for any kind of true morality to exist we need to recognize the indivisible and unique sacredness of every human life, not every life period, every HUMAN life. This is what drives me insane about animal rights zealots – they don’t see humans as unique, and this denigrates human life and leads to absurd, grotesque statements and claims.

Like this:

The Anti-Defamation League has denounced a campaign by an animal rights group that compares slaughtering animals to the murder of 6 million Jews in World War II.

The graphic campaign and exhibit “Holocaust on Your Plate,” devised by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, juxtaposes 60-square-foot panels displaying gruesome scenes from Nazi death camps side by side with disturbing photographs from factory farms and slaughterhouses. One shows a starving man in a concentration camp next to a starving cow.

The exhibit opens Friday in San Diego, California, and went up Thursday at the University of California at Los Angeles. It also is posted on a PETA Web site, www.masskilling.com, which calls for support for the campaign from the Jewish community.

The comparisons prompted an angry statement from Abraham Foxman, Anti-Defamation League national director and a Holocaust survivor.

“The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate, systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent,” the statement said. “PETA’s effort to seek approval for their ‘Holocaust on Your Plate’ campaign is outrageous, offensive and takes chutzpah to new heights.” [CNN]

I would go farther and call it insane.

The more we learn about animals the more we learn of similarities to us, to our feelings and behaviors and emotions. We should treat animals with respect and kindness and see the tree of life as continuous leading up to us. BUT we are absolutely required to see the bright, shimmering, insurmountable line that divides humans from all other animals, and any attempt to smear or fudge that line is anti-human and obscene.