Animals, birds, fish, insects, all are part of the web of benificent life. Human beings have no inalienable or inherent right to dominate, use, kill, or eat these animals, much less to treat them cruelly or inhumanely. I believe in a certain “personhood” of animals– that each animal is born with certain rights, at the very least the right not to be born into a life of pain and torture. I believe it is often possible for human beings to communicate with animals, if we are willing to take the time to learn their language.I support:
- Programs like Seattle’s Great Ape Project which is campaigning for the United Nations to adopt a Declaration on Great Apes, which would designate gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos as a “community of equals” with human beings, giving them three very basic protections: the right to live, to individual liberty, and the right not to be tortured.
- Funding research into communicating with animals.
- Banning the use of animals in pornography.
- Banning sex between human beings and animals.
- Phasing out using animals for entertainment in circuses and zoos.
- Freeing all circus elephants and retiring them to elephant sanctuaries.
- I oppose inhumane factory farming practices, killing animals for their fur, horns or tusks, animal fighting as a spectator sport, killing animals for sport, and all practices which exploit animals and which cause them to suffer so that human beings can be entertained.
