Interesting sidenote to the Vick thing-HSUS

I am completely, totally, in every single way against animal rights. I see it as a disgusting thing to follow.
I do not support or donate to any organization affiliated with any animal rights organization, ever. I know much better than that.

I hope everyone realizes that there's a difference between the philisophical belief that animals have rights and being a terrorist, right? There's no need to be "disgusted" with the idea of animal rights, even if you disagree. It's a philisophical and in some cases spiritual position, it doesn't automatically mean violence and terrorism.

ORIGINAL: houndlove

I hope everyone realizes that there's a difference between the philisophical belief that animals have rights and being a terrorist, right? There's no need to be "disgusted" with the idea of animal rights, even if you disagree. It's a philisophical and in some cases spiritual position, it doesn't automatically mean violence and terrorism.

 
Absolutley.  Very well said Cressida![sm=bravo.gif]

There's no need to be "disgusted" with the idea of animal rights, even if you disagree

 
There is very good reason to be disgusted with whte the entire animal rights movement.  Look at the entire movement, they are trying to shove their agenda down everyones throats and force everyone to their way of thinking thru volence, intidation, threats, and legislation.  Our kids are even given coloring books about how "Mommy Kills Animals" and the evils of fishing.  If someone wants to have a spirtual experience with animals fine,  just don't force that down my throat because I like my veal, fois gras, hunting, and fishing and I don't care about the emotional well being of chickens and pigs.
 
 

The entire idea of animal rights is to eliminate humans intervening with animals all together. That's not just a PeTA belief, that is what animal rights is. This includes pets. I don't need some nutjobs who don't know the first thing about animals telling me I cannot have my dogs, especially my bully breeds, just because they don't agree with it. I've had enough with the anti-pet propraganda from animal rights activists, and especially the anti-bull breed propaganda from the same people.

Animal welfare is something I will always stand behind. It actually makes sense. Animal rights does not. According to AR activists, I cannot have honey, because bee keepers are bee murderers. (Really? Because I have yet to see a bee keeper without any bees!!!)
I suggest everyone look up the differences between animal rights and animal welfare. It's pretty easy to see which one makes more sense, and gets more done. IFAW has done more for the animals and planet in general than PeTA or ALF or any other AR org could ever even hope to do. That's just the way it is.

Everyone here is still confusing one segment of people who have a philisophical position regarding the rights of animals and The Animal Rights Movement capital-letters. I have never in my life shoved my beliefs down anyone's throat which by the definitions presented here is somehow part and parcel of having a philisophical inclination towards believing that animals have their own rights (note: they needn't be the SAME rights as humans have--incarcerated human beings have different rights than those not in prison yet they still have rights). I've never harassed anyone, blown anything up, released captive animals, I go to zoos, I eat honey....yet I do not dismiss out of hand the idea that animals have some form of rights. If they did not, how could we consider dogs any more than simply property, why do we get enraged when people abuse them and feel that doing so is morally wrong? If animals do not have the right to anything, doing anything we wish to them would not be *morally* wrong.

This is a nuanced philisophical question, and I'm just as put off by the Animal Rights Movement capital-letters as everyone else, but for the reason that the completely overly simplify the issues. This is in fact a topic of serious scholarly and academic discourse that gets tragically simplified in to two sides shouting slogans at one another.

Houndlove, to be honest, you seem to fall under Animal Welfare, then.
Animal Rights is what it is. It advocates what it advocates. There's not really a watered down version of it. That's just animal welfare.

Like I said, look up the two. I'm not shouting slogans or shoving anything anywhere, but it's time people understood the difference.[&o]

I think the two of you are on the same side, it's just a semantics issue.[]

I also believe that AR is not something I'd ever get behind.
 
If you believe any variant of 'animals should have the same rights as people'...then that to me...is AR. Within AR there are eople who believe what they believe and don't trouble anyone with it...that sign petitions and live perhaps a 'no kill' lifestyle, for themselves. Then there are those that are waaaay into it and that do the more "intense" stuff.
 
Rather like anything else...vast spectrum of folks. From extreme to 'AR-Lite'...that just like the warm fuzzy aspect but if it came down to hardcore action...likely wouldn't participate.
 
Same spectrum in AW as well, IMO. Extreme to "umm I think I agree".
 
Normal...like religion....the intense hardcore folks will get the most time on air...and the entire movement will be judged by them. If the ArLite's wanted to change that they'd have to not be so lite...so it's a quandry!

So with civil rights, there was no difference between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and, say, Marcus Garvey? That's the same kind of spectrum that's being discussed here. Still civil rights, still same goal, very different views on what it all means and what it would look like and how to get there.

For what it's worth, I am a vegetarian, I am a Buddhist and a lot of this is wrapped up in my spiritual beliefs that humans are simply another animal, another sentient being, and we are not really all that special. We have self-awareness, but recent research has shown that some other higher mammals also posess self-awareness. I do not believe I have the right to kill another animal just because I can. Does it happen sometimes by accident? Yes. That's life, no one is perfect. But is it ever my intention? No. It's a personal decision based on my personal morality and my spirituality. To be honest I find a lot of animal welfare to just be "animal rights but only for some animals that we really like, not for all of them."

I don't see where animal welfare is like that at all.
Ever.
NO animal welfare organization picks out animals that they like to save just because they like them. That is not how it works. That's near insulting.

They reach realistic goals, such as making whaling illegal, helping save animals from forest fires, etc etc.

Animal rights has no goals reached. None. All it's done is bandwagon people on to they can donate more and more money, and then less than 5% of total profits goes towards helping animals. Imagine that.

Houndlove....as to your "for some animals we like" thing....remove animals and insert "causes" and that's the entire environmental movement to me.

Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and, say, Marcus Garvey?

Cressida, Malcolm's pilgrimage changed his beliefs completely (that's why he was killed.)  So I'm assuming you're referring to pre-Mecca Malcolm?[]

Either way I believe that animals do have basic rights, but that those rights are not equal to the rights afforded to humans. 

I can hear the words of George Orwell's Animal Farm echoing in my head, "All animals are created equal but some are more equal than others."
 
By latching on to those so-called "realistic" goals such as saving the whales and saving animals from forest fires, the animals welfare movement (as it is being suggested it is) is discriminating to other animals. Are they not worthy enough? Too much trouble to save others? What is "realistic" and where do we draw the line? What makes certain animals more equal that they deserve protection and advocacy?
 
I am not saying I agree one way or another on this, I am merely pointing out that the animals welfare moverment, in it's effort to save animals, is discriminatory... if we look at it this way.

I still fail to see how animal welfare 'picks favourites' as it is being assumed here.

Organizations like IFAW have done way more than organizations such as PeTA and ALF. Heck, PeTA doesn't even want us to have pets in the first place, and less than 1% of their annual profit even goes to helping animals. It is all bundled into campaigns, vans, and even a walk-in freezer where ex-PeTA employees say dead animals were kept for said 'campaigns'.

IFAW has focused on whaling, shelter animals, victims of forest fires, animals that are wrongly exploited, etc etc, yet they are picking favourites? They have had whaling banned in several places, and have helped to put a dead halt to heavy trafficing areas in the ivory trade that have driven species to near extinction. There are more animals out there than just our pets, and animal welfare recognizes that. It is also broken up into several other things, not just a big ogranization. Unlike animal rights, animal welfare has actually made it's mark, and gotten laws passed. Obviously you haven't done much research into it.