Animal Rights: A Main Stream Movement

One Voice


Animal Rights:

A Main Stream Movement

by Stephanie Ernst


Animal rights, at its heart, is the most unextreme philosophy I can imagine.

It is about nonviolence.
It is about compassion.
It is about not harming and not causing suffering and not killing when we don't have to.
That's it. It is really, truly that simple.

Indeed, perhaps it is even that simplicity that causes so many to mock the animal rights movement or dismiss it as silly or radical-....-because if they can marginalize it, they don't have to acknowledge the simplicity of it or truly ask and answer why they don't support it too.

And when exploiting, imposing suffering on, and killing our fellow animals (our fellow, kindred animals, not unfeeling, unthinking robots) is completely unnecessary for the overwhelming majority of people who support such exploitation, suffering, and killing--when none of that is truly required for a full, meaningful, healthy, enjoyable life--how does anyone justify not supporting animal rights? When killing is a choice--when there is a clear choice between a philosophy of nonviolence and a philosophy of killing for personal pleasures (such as taste)--how can anyone consider that philosophy of nonviolence to be "extreme" or "radical"? If we're going to question or even demean a choice, shouldn't it be the choice to exploit and kill for convenience and pleasure?

Animal rights and veganism are merely a consistent manifestation of values nearly everyone purports to hold. When there is a choice between (1) nonviolence and compassion and (2) exploitation and killing, animal rights simply asks that you choose nonviolent compassion. Others'--other individuals, movements, and organizations'....--perception and definition of animal rights as extreme or radical because of their personal discomfort with the movement and the sometimes-....difficult questions and changes it calls on them to contemplate does not make animal rights extreme or radical. The qualities others wish to attribute to animal rights are not qualities to which the animal rights movement must stipulate. I do not accept. We do not accept.

If compassion and nonviolence are not mainstream values, it is a sad world. If an individual's choice to extend compassion in ways that, for example, contribute far less to mass suffering and death, contribute far less to environmental destruction and global warming, contribute far less to the problem of world hunger, and contribute far less to myriad health problems is extreme, we need to reconsider the definition of that word. And if a movement advocating all this is radical, other "mainstream" movements calling for reforms and equalities far more involved than simple nonviolence must be just outrageous.

The sheer magnitude of death and suffering that humans yearly, daily, hourly, every second choose to inflict on their fellow feeling, thinking animals is unlike anything being experienced by the humans of this planet. The physical and mental abuse, the suffering, and the death are grand-scale and constant, and that deserves as much attention as any other contemporary issue or cause. There's no excuse-....-none--for mocking animal rights, for patronizing those who fight for animal rights, for dismissing animals' plight, or for marginalizing animals' suffering or judging all animal issues to be inherently less important than human issues. Animal rights deserve and mandate a place at the table--at the literal dinner table, in conversations with friends and family, in political conversations, in places of worship, in schools, and yes, here at Change.org. And I'm grateful and proud that this site gives animal rights a visible space here, alongside other deeply important issues, where it belongs.

Animal rights is mainstream.
The mainstream just doesn't want to acknowledge that.



Some folks insist that believing
in animal rights is like a religion.
But religion asks followers
to believe in things nobody can see,
while animal rights advocates ask followers
to see things nobody can believe.
-Craig Burton

Source: animalrights-change-org-blogs
Posted By: One Voice