Animal rights, properly understood, is not animal welfare: It is an ideology that creates moral equality between people and fauna.
PETA is the most famous–but actually, not the most dangerous–purveyor of this anti-human ideology. It recently made news by attacking a 14-year-old boy, who wants to sell a cow to raise money for a field trip to the UK. From the FNN story:
When 14-year-old Logan Ward came up with the idea to raffle off a cow in order to raise money to go with a non-profit group on a trip to Europe, he never expected it would mean he’d be receiving antagonizing emails from PETA. But that’s exactly what happened. The animal rights group not only sent Logan nasty messages, but also photos like the one shown here, depicting women wearing lettuce as underwear.
The original email, from PETA’s Whitney Calk, read in part: “It just seems a little strange to me that you feel that someone needs to die for you to go on your school trip… I feel like we can both surely agree that there are several other humane ways to fund raise these days that don’t involve a dead, chopped up corpse.”
That’s mild compared to PETA’s usual style. For example, it hands “comic” books to children attacking “mom” for wearing fur and “dad” for fishing. As I reported in my book, A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement:
[I]n its second “PETA Comic,” Your Daddy KILLS Animals!, an anti-fishing diatribe the cover of which vividly depicts an “evil daddy” wearing a hat affixed with lures and fish hooks (and a skull and crossbones) eviscerating a fish. In lurid large red letters, the cover states: “Ask your daddy why he’s hooked on killing!” On the inside, the children are told: “Imagine that a man dangles a piece of candy in front of you. So you reach for it. But, as you grab the candy, a huge metal hook stabs through your hand and you are ripped off the ground…You’d feel really scared wouldn’t you? That would be an awful trick to play on somebody, wouldn’t it?” Then, comes the anthropomorphism so thick it can be cut with a knife. “Fish may not be cuddly or cute like kitties and puppies, but fish are really smart. They learn from each other and can remember things for a long time. Just like people, fish eavesdrop to get info and they can even use tools!” And it wouldn’t be a PETA Comic without warnings against parents killing pets. “Until your daddy learns that it’s not ‘fun’ to kill, keep your doggies and kitties away from him. He’s so hooked on killing defenseless animals that they could be next!”
Can you imagine telling a child that if their dad fishes, he might kill the family cat?
PETA activists–as distinguished from many of its naive contributors–are zealots and bullies. They are not about “being nicer to animals,” but about ending all animal domestication of every kind. They have apologized to the kid–because sometimes even bad publicity isn’t good publicity–but the attack on a boy raising money for a field trip is a small example of the true nastiness of this awful organization.