Published on
Sunday, April 19, 2015
by Flagler Live
Enough Abuse: Close Seaworld
byPierre Tristam
Four years ago People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the insurgent organization better known as PETA, sued Seaworld on behalf of five killer whales. That was ridiculous in itself. Animals have protected rights. But there is no legal basis for suing on behalf of an animal that has no say in the suit, however imposing the animal may be. PETA named the five orcas as if they were suing, and did worse. It invoked the 13th Amendment, comparing killer whales to slaves, and arguing they should be freed just like slaves. PETA marketed the lawsuit as groundbreaking constitutional law. The Greenpeace of animal rights can’t be faulted for creativity. It got plenty of attention for that angle before the insulting nature of the suit caught up with it and a federal judge tossed it.
The problem with the lawsuit wasn’t its intent. It was its sensational gamble that making a link between animals in captivity and slaves would capture the public’s imagination and sway judges. Instead of truly breaking legal ground for animal rights, and that has yet to happen, PETA went the lazier route of mooching off the 13th amendment and lost. So did the animals it claimed to represent. Because however mistaken was PETA’s strategy, its intentions were correct, so was some of its reasoning: the animals it intended to save are still in prison, still being tortured for our pleasures. Calling them slaves was unnecessary. It’s bad enough they’re captives, exploited, demeaned.
Killer whales at Seaworld are not just in captivity. They are there to be subjugated to a lurid form of human entertainment. None of it meshes with the whales’ nature even as Seaworld, among so many of its perversions of the wild, pretends to be “educating” audiences about the wild. Orcas’ captivity is cruel. Their confinement is inhumane by any measure. Nothing justifies it, not even the supposed “research” that gives Seaworld cover for its brutality. The animals’ treatment, if a recent book by a long-time trainer of these animals is to be believed, is sadistic. (John Hargrove, the author of “Beneath the Surface,” has his own demons, not least of them his drunken bigotry, now that Seaworld is going Nixonian on his rants by trying to discredit him. But his Southern-white racism toward blacks, nothing new among Southern whites, didn’t keep Seaworld from employing him 20 years, and doesn’t diminish the validity of his conclusions. He’s apologized for his bigotry. The scurrility of Seaworld’s tactics speak for themselves, and Seaworld is apologizing for nothing.) ................(more)
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/04/19/enough-abuse-close-seaworld
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