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By Punkerslut
In today's society, the rights of an animal go only as far as it benefits the consumers in today's economy. There have been those who stated that animals were only created for the purpose of being used in some way by humans. It is this belief that I shall challenge... Any animal -- whether it is human or non-human, tall or short, mammalian or non-mammalian, male or female, white or black -- is capable of consciousness. By this, I mean there is no canyon separating humans and non-humans when it comes to suffering. A cow is just as capable of suffering and emotions just as much as a human, just as much as a rat or a pig. What I am trying to say is that there is an inherent trait found within all animals, that we all have a sort of kinship, that we are all fully capable of experiencing the same world, of understanding the same suffering, of knowing what experience is. The Abolitionists who fought against slavery knew this all too well. "Despite the color of skin of any human," they argued, "We are all capable of feeling the same pains, and therefore we are all deserving of rights." The same can be said of the other movements which worked for a sort of equality. The Women's Suffragists, for example, understood that both females and males are conscious beings, equal in feeling suffering and in feeling joy, and therefore both deserving of rights. If these Civil Liberties movements were right in their ideology -- which I firmly believe that they are -- then to what end can the brutality of eating meat be defended? It is true that the color of a man's skin cannot deny him any rights. It is true that a woman's gender cannot deny her any rights. I hold even further that the quantity of legs a being has cannot deny them any rights! Despite what species, race, gender, or sexuality an animal is from, such characteristics are irrelevant. There is one primary trait held by all animals: consciousness, the capability of feeling suffering. It is for this reason -- the regard and compassion I hold for the lower animals -- that I am a Vegetarian, and it is for this reason that I make a plea for Vegetarianism. Punkerslut,
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