Wesley J Smith at National Review has the story: When Animals Sue
Should animals, like indigent criminal defendants, be provided with legal representation by the state? It could happen. As Time has reported, on March 7, voters in Switzerland will decide whether to give “domestic creatures . . . the constitutional right to be represented by (human) lawyers in court.”
What? Treating animals at law as if they were human? Don’t laugh. Lest we be tempted to dismiss the referendum as just the latest European post-modernistic folly, the effort to open our own courtrooms to animals is quietly advancing. Indeed, “animal standing,” as the issue is usually called, is at the very top of the animal-rights movement’s policy wish list.
But animals suing? For most people, the very idea is a surreal fantasy out of a Far Side cartoon. But from the viewpoint of animal-rights ideologues, nothing could be more logical. The dogma of animal liberation demands the obliteration of all animal industries and, eventually, the eradication by attrition of all domesticated animals. As Wayne Pacelle stated in 1993 before being appointed to his current post as head of the Humane Society of the United States, “One generation and out. We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals. They are the product of human selective breeding.”
Animal standing also has a philosophical purpose. The ultimate goal of animal rights is not merely the improved treatment of animals; that effort is properly called animal welfare. Animal-rights dogma holds that there is no moral distinction to be made between animals and humans, and therefore what is done to an animal should be viewed as if it were done to a human.
One way to achieve societal acquiescence in this view would be to transform at least some animals into legal “persons.” As animal-rights-crusading law professor Stephen Wise wrote in Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights, convincing the courts to grant “practical personhood” to chimps and other higher mammals would open the courtroom door to animals, a move he described as “the first and most crucial step toward unlocking the cage” to all animals generally:
On what non arbitrary ground could a judge find the [profoundly disabled] girl has a common law right to bodily integrity that forbids her use in terminal biomedical research, but that Koko [a gorilla] shouldn't have that right, without violating basic notions of equality? Only a radical speciesist could accept a baby girl who lacks consciousness, sentience, even a brain, as having legal rights just because she is human, yet thinkingest, talkingest, feelingest apes have no rights at all, just because they're not human.In other words, activists are striving for human/animal moral equality by working from both ends toward the middle: Granting personhood to animals would open the door to legal standing and the destruction of animal industries, while granting animals the right to sue would result in their elevation to legal personhood. From the activists’ perspective, it doesn’t matter which comes first, the chicken or the egg.
Smith has more to say that I haven't printed here. Should the voters pass this, it has the potential to lead to judicial abuse, pet owner harassment and the near-destruction of numerous industries (pet food, farming, etc). If there's one group of people crazier than environmentalist wackos, it's extreme animal activists.
But that's not the worst of it - as Smith points out, the push is to eliminate the distinction between humans and animals, a distinction that our Christian tradition has held from the beginning. Whereas we see all humans endowed with rights given by God, and hold that all people are created in the image and likeness of God, the radical animal rights activists perceive animals as deserving more rights than people who are handicapped or incapacitated. That's already been established, by the way - Terri Schiavo comes to mind.
Does animal abuse occur? Yes it does, unfortunately, and there are laws on the books in Switzerland to deal with such instances. The activists believe they do not go far enough. Animal rights activists would rather see dogs and cats killed off instead of being "enslaved" by human owners. Or cattle raised for beef. Or circuses come to town. Or bullriding. And so on. But don't be fooled - this has nothing to do with justice - it's about forcing their viewpoint on the rest of humanity, by redefining humanity to include all of creation. As someone once said (I think it was Fr Corapi) - when the world gets deChristianized (which has happened in Europe), then the world becomes dehumanized.
While there are those who want to deny rights to the unborn, or allow testing on human embryos, there are others who want Fido and Champ to sue their owners for unfair treatment, however that gets defined. And in most cases, the people holding such worldviews are often the one and the same.
And it's looking like it might pass. The Time article states that 70% of pet owners support the initiative. Switzerland, the country that leads the world in killing people off via assisted suicide, could become the first country to give animals sweeping legal standing. And the funny thing is, the animals wouldn't know what's going on and would care less. But that doesn't matter, because this isn't about the animals.
This kind of action may be endemic to Switzerland. After all, back in May of 2008, I posted about the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology and their push for the humane treatment of plants (Plants Have Feelings Too). Passing the "Lawyers For Lassie" bill would complete the trifecta: assisted suicide for people, tender loving care for plants, and special rights for animals.
On March 8, the next step in liberalism's march to redefine what it means to be human may be accomplished, by redefining 'animals' as 'humans'. Given the worldview of the radical liberal, it's a logical step - throughout history they've been adept at denying humanity to all sorts of people.
