Merrily Dancing Ape

In the past few decades the USA has made great strides in terms of racial equality, women’s rights, and LGBT rights. We have our first black president. Our next president may just well be a woman. Gay marriage is now legal in all fifty states. Our country is becoming more open, more inclusive, kinder, and freer.

“Great strides” does not mean “problem solved.” Women still get paid less than men, especially women of color. Unarmed black people keep getting shot to death or otherwise mistreated by white cops.

A good barometer of where we’re at with civil rights may be the demographics of Congress. According to Pew Research the 114^th Congress is the most racially diverse in history. But it’s still disproportionately white. Only 17% of Congress is non-white where 38% of the population is non-white. Women make up roughly 50% of the population but only around 20% of Congress. Only six members of Congress identify openly as LGBT, a little over 1%, when according to Gallup 3.8% of the population identifies as LGBT.

So we have room to improve. But this concept of equality for all—this dream of the feminists and the humanists and Martin Luther King—seems to be rolling onward and gaining steam.

Where do we go from here? Our circle of compassion expands ever outward, embracing more and more people in the group we call “us” and fewer in the group we call “them.” Who is next?

I hope that the next cause Liberal America takes up in a big way will be animal rights.

BOOM! I went there! I got talking about statistics and you didn’t know where I was going, and now suddenly I’m talking about animal rights, a subject you hate.

Animal rights! Ohhh here we go. Another sanctimonious, self-righteous vegetarian acting all superior.

Relax! I’m not asking you to stop eating meat. Animals make all sorts of useful and desirable products, and most of us have grown to depend upon these products. I’m not judging you for liking McDonalds. Animal research? It’s fine. Sea world? Go enjoy the show. Horse ranches? Ridem’ cowboy!

But if you’re a secular person, a humanist, a person who believes in making decisions based upon reason versus authority, please consider the following:

The idea that animals have no rights whatsoever is a religious one. In the Bible, Yahweh grants humans “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Christians once believed, and many still do, that humans have souls and animals do not. Animals are merely machines made from flesh. Our species is uniquely privileged with personhood. Animals are just things. Any use of animals we can think up is automatically justifiable. We are entitled to keep animals in whatever conditions are convenient to us without regard for their welfare.

This is an old-fashioned concept. It’s not scientific. We now know that we share a great deal of DNA with other animals, particularly mammals. We share similar nervous systems, similar brains. There’s no logical reason to grant members of our own species complete moral consideration but animals none whatsoever.

So the way we treat animals doesn’t make sense anymore. But people reflexively defend orthodoxy, whether it’s theism or racism or sexism or any other ism, and that’s never truer than with speciesism. We’re defensive about our dominion over animals.

There’s an argument to be made that humans have as much right to eat animals as animals have to eat each other. If lions eat gazelles why can’t humans eat cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys and, hell, gazelles?

I don’t have a response to that. I don’t think it’s my place to tell you you’re wrong for using animal products. We all express compassion toward animals in our own way, and it’s a personal choice.

But I do think the moment has arisen in human history when we can start to ask this much of each other: While the animals are alive, treat them humanely. That’s all animal rights is about. It’s just about asking our industries to treat animals as nicely as the average person treats animals in their daily lives.

Animals will continue to die for human benefit. I’m under no illusion that this will stop any time soon. But there’s no reason they must suffer. The way animals in our custody live and the way they die is important. Modern factory farming has got to change its ways.

The issue of gay rights was once fringe and is now mainstream. In the same way, I believe our society is ready to start taking animal rights seriously.