Animal Rights Activists Have Lost Perspective

The people whose business is animal welfare ought to have the grace to reserve their subject matter for another day, out of respect for the human life that was lost

By Naomi Lakritz, Calgary Herald

THE TRIBUTES CAME POURING IN in the wake of Stampede chuckwagon driver Bill McEwen's death - but so did the tackiness. The day after McEwen died of his injuries at the Foothills Hospital, Calgary animal rights activist Michael Alvarez-Toye had a comment to make.

''Animal abuse is not entertaining,'' he grumbled to reporters, referring to the horse which had to be destroyed as a result of the crash.

Cathy Thomas, executive director of the Calgary Humane Society, had a comment, too.

''Our primary concern is for the horses. We always believe if it's safer for the horses, it's safer for the drivers and outriders,'' she said.

Yes, but a man just died. The death of a horse pales in comparison - or ought to, and the people whose business is animal welfare ought to have the grace to reserve their subject matter for another day, out of respect for the human life that was lost.

Such comments made in the immediate aftermath of human tragedy appear to put the loss of a horse on par with that of a human when it most emphatically is not, despite a certain movement afoot to think of animals as though they are people just like the rest of us.

New Zealand recently proposed a law that would recognize gorillas as a species equal in legal stature to humans. Canadian animal rights activists have been lobbying in various provinces for changes to cruelty laws which, in some cases, would inflict greater penalties on someone who kicks a kitten than on someone who shakes a baby to death.

Not, one should hasten to add, that kitten-kicking isn't deplorable. It's just that baby-killing is worse.

This two-legs-good-four-legs-just-as-good-or-better sentiment is definitely growing. When I wrote a column several months ago suggesting that pit bulls make rather nasty pets, a number of readers called my remarks racist.

When one uses the same word to describe both apartheid and an aversion to a particular breed of dog, not only has proper perspective been frighteningly lost, but the dignity of humans whose lives are subjugated by racist regimes is further diminished.

A couple of weeks ago, Heather Sherman, an Ontario woman with an equally skewed perspective, announced plans to get that province to change its laws to accord family pets the same rights and protections as children. It does not say much for the regard in which this society supposedly holds children if a cat can achieve equality with them.

Sherman launched her campaign after her poodle was kicked by a man who was irate because it had soiled his lawn. It's hard not to sympathize with that man who was probably fed up to the teeth with the arrogance of all too many dog owners who treat other people's property as a loo for Lassie and stand there, pretending not to notice as their pets spray trees, shrubs and flower beds or foul the lawn.

It seems a re-education campaign for such pet owners ought to be in the works, but Sherman's response was to lobby for a law that would elevate dogs to the level of humans.

The precepts for such a law are inherently silly for they rest purely on what might be called the fuzziness factor. Thus, Sherman and local Humane Society officials who are backing her, talk about cats and dogs. But there are other family pets, too, so mustn't the law also declare that a budgie, a hamster and the goggle-eyed guppies in Junior's fishbowl are all equal to Junior?

And what about protection for animals just as sentient as pets? If the hamster spinning madly in its wheel is worthy of such legal status, then setting a trap for its cousin, the mouse, in the basement must constitute abuse. You can't pick and choose because then you're applying an arbitrary human standard to the animal world, and that's what this movement abhors. You're left with no choice but to carry legal protection on down to the thrips blissfully chomping on your rose leaves.

Nobody denies that to mistreat animals is abhorrent. There are already laws on the books to deal with such abuse.

But it is equally abhorrent to regard animals - be they calico cats or chuckwagon horses - as no different from humans and to assign identical value to their lives.

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