Start Date: July 17, 2001 Finish Date: July 17, 2001

     And who can dispute that they do not deserve this right? Humans are all equal and are all treated equal. We grant human beings compassionate treatment and warmth, as well as emotional support. I doubt it is the fact that they are humans that we give them this treatment. Rather, it is the fact that humans are sentient beings, capable of feeling pain, suffering, joy, desire, and happiness. Then, certainly, if discriminating on skin color is wrong, then how can discriminating on the quantity of legs a being holds? I would find that sentience, the capability of emotions and desires, is the overriding factor - over skin color and leg quantity - when I decide if a being deserves to be treated with moral consideration.

     There is no justification for buying and purchasing meat to fill your stomach, and thus advancing an industry bent on carnage, when the Earth is so good as to give us food that is not conscious. One may say that animals are not intelligent and therefore do not deserve the right to life, but intelligence is no more a requirement for the right to life than skin color, and if it is, then would it be justified to kill and consume human infants? One may say that animals kill and consume each other, but that is only because they have to by necessity, where humans kill and marauder without necessity of food but only a desire of pleasuring the tongue. Besides, if imitating the acts of animals is justified, then would rape be justified when copying Galapagos lizards and theft when copying gorillas? One may say that plants are alive, but this doesn't matter, as they are not sentient; there is no harm is delivered upon them by killing or consuming them. One may say that God gave us animals to kill and consume, but to say that, what kind of tyrannical and vindictive God would act so vicious as to create an entire group of beings only so that they may die under the grinding teeth of our mouths? Even so, if such a God existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. Another may say that our teeth are designed for flesh, but our teeth are designed for all flesh, including human, and a gun is built for killing, but does that justify its usage to kill or maim a human?

     I can see no means by which anyone may say that animals have no rights, as humans are animals, and if man has rights, then certainly the lower races must.

"Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case." - Peter Singer, "Animal Liberation," page 9, First Edition

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