I would like to express my support for the message of compassion that PETA brought to Ohio University's campus.
Learning is challenging, but we must think about commonalities between systems of domination and ways in which their victims will suffer.
Web sites like peta2.com show just how horribly animals suffer for the products of our vanity and gluttony. Animals are routinely de-beaked, castrated and hung upside down to be sliced open - all without pain killers.
I believe humans' wonderful societies and unique ability to weigh the consequences of our actions gives us the obligation to help others.
In a great book entitled Dominion
Matthew Scully proposes that, justice is not a finite commodity nor are kindness and love. Where we find wrongs done to animals it is no excuse to say that more important wrongs are done to human beings. A wrong is a wrong
and often the little ones - when they are shrugged off as nothing - spread and do the gravest harm to ourselves and others.
We know that abusing humans is immoral, and we even find it unacceptable to exploit dogs and cats, which often share our homes. Why then, should the mass suffering of animals behind closed doors be tolerable?
- Sarah Schaaf is a sophomore music production major. Send her an e-mail at ss506604@ohiou.edu.
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