Photo: A dog, rightly or wrongly, labeled a “pit bull.” These dogs have no rights, according to Ingrid Newkirk and PETA. Not only can they be killed, Newkirk proclaims, they should be killed.
“A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” Like no other, this pronouncement by Ingrid Newkirk, the founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), appeared to lay down the gauntlet, an inviolate line in the sand that animals deserve the kinds of legal rights we recognize for people. In other words, if you would not eat a boy, you should not eat a pig. If you would not poison a boy, you should not poison a rat. If you would not abuse a boy, you should not abuse a dog.
Now, science has vindicated Newkirk’s pronouncement, at least as it relates to dogs. In “Dogs Are People, Too” from the New York Times, Dr. Gregory Berns writes, “The ability to experience positive emotions, like love and attachment would mean that dogs have a level of sentience comparable to that of a human child.” So if a dog is a boy, as Newkirk says and science proves, why is it wrong to kill a boy, but according to PETA, not wrong to kill a dog?
Indeed, PETA has killed healthy and treatable dogs, defends the killing of healthy and treatable dogs, and has pursued policies that increase the number of healthy and treatable dogs killed by others. Roughly nine out of 10 dogs who enter PETA’s facility go out the back door in garbage bags. Why the hypocrisy? In my latest Huffington Post article, I explore why.
Read “A Dog is a Boy, Except When PETA Kills Him” by clicking here.
Please note: This is not a criticism against legal rights for dogs. To the contrary, I agree with Dr. Berns on this issue and he vindicates Newkirk’s pronouncement that a “dog is a boy” deserving of legal rights given the neuroscientific evidence of sentience. It is a criticism with Newkirk’s hypocritical view that dogs have rights only until they enter animal shelters or PETA headquarters and then they no longer do (i.e., they can be killed with impunity). In other words, it is a criticism that the most basic right which every human being cherishes above all others and without which no other rights can be guaranteed—the right to life—is not, as it should be, ground zero in the struggle for animal rights, but rather a fundamental principle which many “animal rights activists” carelessly, casually, and cruelly disregard. In fact, many individuals and groups that self-identify (falsely, it turns out) as “animal rights” do not actually believe in the rights of animals and that includes Newkirk, PETA, and their supporters.
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Here is my story: www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=11902
And this is my vision: http://vimeo.com/48445902