Start Date: June 19, 2001 Finish Date: June 19, 2001

"The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for the abandoning of a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" - Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, chapter 17, by Jeremy Bentham

     I ask... does an animal have fewer rights than a human, simply because one is born with a different genome type? I can see not, for even humans are animals and all animals are conscious beings. We can all think. We can all suffer. We can all feel pain. A black human does not deserve fewer rights than a white human simply because of the pigmentation of skin. Nor does a woman deserve fewer rights than a man because of her sexual organ. On what right may one claim that a non-human animal has no rights when compared to a human? I cannot conceive of such a dichotomy. If there is truly no moral line between black humans and white humans, women and men - rather tangible characteristics that are physically observable but incapable of determining nature of sentience - then there can be no such moral line between human and subhuman. Regardless of race, all humans may feel the same pain and suffering. Regardless of gender, all humans can feel the same pain and suffering. And absolutely regardless of species, all animals - be they two legged or four legged, armed or winged, hairy or hairless - are capable of feeling the same emotions, the same desires, and the same pains as you and I are capable of feeling. When there is certainly no justice when a white man enslaves a black man, there can certainly be no justice when a human eats a non-human.

     Animals are sentient. Plants are not. We have an option. If discrimination on grounds of physical characteristics such as skin color, gender, or quantity of legs is wrong and immoral, then we should absolutely stop consuming animals. How barbaric humanity has become. Last year, ten and a half billion animals that could feel as much as you and I were slaughtered. They filled your stomachs. They covered your shoes. These carcasses are sentient fusion. Stop consuming animals.

Punkerslut,

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