In a June post, I critiqued the caving in of British Columbia education officials to litigious activists by granting them K-12 review of public school curricula for gay-friendliness, and by agreeing to initiate a Grade 12 "social justice" course to validate gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered sexual orientations. Now, as far as I'm concerned, the Gs, Ls, Bs and Ts can be as G, L, B and T as they like; so long as their sexual expressions of self occur between consenting adults and their behavior in public meets broader community standards of decency and legality. But as I wrote:

I think there is a problem here. Certain other constituencies receive only lip service, if that. It is clear that the transgendered community, the bondage community, the leather fetishist community, and especially the polyamorous and non-gendered communities won't be granted adequate consideration under the settlement. It will be necessary to appoint additional curriculum overseers to ensure these groups - whose members also have made important contributions to history - are likewise given their due in the lessons taught to B.C's public school students. Otherwise they might also suffer human rights violations. Moreover, sexuality is hardly the only important diversity teachings criterion. Following the logic displayed in this settlement, coursework will also need community review to ensure it is appropriately inclusive and respectful to different racial and religious groups.

In this post-modern age, religion effectively encompasses moral crusaders in thrall to the high priests and priestesses of animal rights. The Vancouver Sun reports that the "social justice" course about which I earlier blogged must now, according to the urgings of a Vancouver Humane Society representative, also ventilate the tyranny of humans over animals because something called "speciesism" is alleged to be the moral equivalent of racism and sexism. Cows, pigs and chickens, you see, are not only subjugated cruelly by human animals. They aso lack parity with preferred domestic species such as cats and dogs. This despite the occasional unguent tale of a legally victorious, condo-dwelling potbellied pig.

When you espouse the gospel of "speciesism" and are confused about the differences between animals and humans, you may well engage in confused or even heinous actions as a result. You might merely protest cockroach-eating contests; or take fake blood, animal costumes and animal face masks to staged "die-ins." Fairly harmless. Then again, you might instead morph at a recently former girlfriend's behest from animal lab researcher and newly-minted molecular biology PhD to a jailed animal rights vandal. You might be sentenced to two years in prison for death threats made on behalf of......guinea pigs. Or you might or tell lawmakers that animal researchers deserve to die.

Animals were put on earth; not into a vacuum. Animals have sometimes preyed on man, and have always preyed on one another. They have also formed strategic alliances with each other, and with man. To humans, animals have provided companionship, meat, labor, and warm fur pelts for protection against the elements. For millenia.

Now they are also subjects for scientific research.

They are animals. We are humans.

We and animals have some things in common, but also have enough differences that humanoids should on balance be very comfortable with our species taking the upper hand.

To equate the rights of the animals with the civil and legal rights of humans is ultimately quite dehumanizing.

TECHNORATI TAGS: ANIMAL RIGHTS, VANCOUVER, SPECIESISM, COCKROACH EATING, DIE-INS, ANIMAL TESTING, VANDALISM, DEATH THREATS

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 26, 2006 11:47 AM

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