PETA points out about zoos that “Zoos breed their animals or acquire them from other zoos. Babies are great crowd-pleasers, but when the babies grow up, they don’t attract the same number of people, so zoos often sell them off in order to make room for younger animals. The unwanted adult animals are sometimes sold to “game” farms where hunters pay to kill them; some are killed for their meat and/or hides. Other “surplus” animals may be sold to smaller, more poorly run zoos or, worse, to laboratories for experiments.” I find nothing cute, cuddly, or child-friendly about zoos. They’re essentially prisons for animals, with the inmates often living on death row.

FYI: the argument that some slaveholders used in the 1800s – that they were “saving” the African from a tenuous life in the Jungle is the same exact attitude toward Africa that prevailed in the 1970s with regard to zoo animals. It’s an inherently colonial attitude, flawed deeply in principle, with similar effects on the species and the perception of the species “rescued”. For that matter, it’s also the patriarchal attitude that prevailed over women as well. Women were rescued from “having” to compete equally in the world of action (commerce, war, legal and political obligation) and were ‘protected’ by being enshrined in ornamental or domestic status. In that sense, the attitude is feudal as well as colonial. We simply applied it to animals at the same time we were disavowing it for gender and race differences in our own species.

“Dog” is often a derogatory term in this culture – you dog, man she’s a dog, etc. It reflects the fundamental attitude. Consequently people feed their dogs stuff they wouldn’t want to eat if they were dogs (rendering plant byproduct, Iams, and the like), they let his teeth go unbrushed, they leave him outside or ignored all the time, provide inadequate quarters, let his water sit for days, and euthanize him if he needs an operation or gets too sick (though we’re starting to treat the elderly that way, too).

When looking at the dog as something fundamentally not what we are, an abstraction (thank neoplatonism for that), there’s a disparity, because that is not how he looks at us. The dog considers us his pack, his family. To not also look upon him as one of us – a full member of the family, is to engage in a false contract, an act of mere domination. If you’re a fundamentalist who’s going on about ‘dominion over the earth’ this isn’t for you – I write you off from the start. As I said – neoplatonism. For people with actual ethics, though, not merely unaccountable pronouncements from a Zeus on high, this is simply an equation. To engage in false exchange with an animal, to ‘deal falsely’ as the Torah would put it, is contemptable. It’s a dishonest deal and we shouldn’t live with animals if we can’t deal honestly with them. It’s an unequal measure, which all honest gods hate – an error of proportionality.

SQ 755 must go – Letter to Editor, The Tulsa World 11/14/2010 State Question 755 forbids Oklahoma courts from considering Islamic or international law and singles out one religion for disparate treatment. This is a violation of my rights as a non-Muslim, and robs me of the ground on which my own legal protections stand.

If the state wants to ban consideration of any and all religious traditions, including referring to or drawing upon any notion of Judeo-Christian values, the Ten Commandments as a body of legal tradition, the concept of a Christian nation, God, the Bible and prayer in schools, then that would be equal treatment and I will accept it. Singling out one religious group, especially the least popular one, licenses discrimination against any group that becomes unpopular in the future. This measure is a violation of equal protection, and of the Civil Rights Act. Including a measure against considering international law in rulings also violates the separation of powers at the state level. Legislating which bodies of superior law, contractual implications and precedent may or may not be considered by a court, whether that be common law tradition, Blackstone, Justinian’s law, a U.N. resolution or the Geneva Convention against torture, it is an attack on judicial freedom, and that is a violation of my freedom as a citizen of the Oklahoma to live in a fair and just political system with the protections that separation brings. The law violates the Constitution of the state of Oklahoma and must be struck down. – Original: [Tulsa World] [Daily Oklahoman]

Response to commenters:

There are a couple of theories of constitutionality – one says it’s ok to have a self-contradictory constitution, and we can write whatever contradictions we want into it – like proclaiming the equality of all people and religious freedom and then having provisions for denying both. Another approach to constitutionality says contradictions at a constitutional level cannot be allowed to exist. You can’t say freedom for all, and then say ‘but we really don’t mean that’. So yeah, it’s unconstitutional to make an ammendment to the constitution that counteracts the constitution.

Also, SQ755 isn’t banning Sharia law, it’s banning considering it in any court case. The problem with that can be illustrated like this. In my own religious tradition, part of the marriage agreement is that our children will be raised in our Faith. In the case of divorce, a judge can consider that both parties entered into contractual assent to this at the time of marriage, and that can affect specific visitation rights that may be necessary to ensure the contract is honored. For me, but not for someone who is Muslim. That’s discrimination. Now where Muslim law provides for something that’s a violation of Oklahoma law, like cutting off hands, beating wives, etc, judges are already unable to ignore laws against torture, maiming, and abuse – it simply is not an issue.

SQ755 is driven by tin foil hat wearing sensationalism that says they’re coming for us to make us live by the Koran, and that’s simply untrue, nor does this law in any way address that, if it were. And, frankly, it makes us look like a bunch of bumpkins. It’s also blatantly discriminatory in a bigoted Old South sort of way – watching the sponsors on TV saying we’re unabashedly Judeo-Christian in our law, says this isn’t about protecting people from the abuses of any and all religion, but about establishing one religion and persecuting another. It’s dishonest, and frankly I won’t be party to a legal fiction – a lie.

All this said, I’ve no intention of debating this ad infinitum in this forum. It’s true, the people have spoken. The people are wrong, and they’re quite capable of being wrong. Law isn’t about whatever enough people want to pull off at the voting booth – that denies the constitutional form of government itself, and makes it dishonest to defend any constitutional ammendments. Law is about preserving rights for everyone, even when we ourselves are uncomfortable. A pure majority is an un-American way of doing law, an un-Oklahoman way of doing law, and is more appropriate to some kind of fundamentalist religious legality than any constitutional environment. In other words, proponents of SQ755 have more in common with those few fundamentalists who would like Sharia Law to rule everything, than either party does with constitutionalists. As a constitutionalist, I reject both forms of fundamentalism in a legal context. So as far as the debate goes, I’ll continue it in a legal context, supporting a constitutional form of government that’s consistent, within the courts.

You take a lot of flack for talking about the sentience of non-human animals. Fundamentalists, and Neo-conservatism (the deistic expression of that religion) after all, have a hard and fast wedge between humans and animals. Atheists who deny the soul and so can’t distinguish brain from mind, have an even harder time with the inherent contradictions in that systems. But even suggesting the sentience of plants, in such a context, is regarded as dancing naked under the moon wearing elk antlers and a loin cloth. Even some of my own people would get uncomfortable, because of what the culture around them is telling them is OK – a bit like how ordinary people, fearful, weak-minded soccer moms aside, have absorbed the tinfoil hat sensationalism about Muslims coming to get us with Sharia law. But the ancient understanding, among my people and in the world in general, as well as genuine scientific understanding, means increasingly you’ve either got to retreat into the magical world of your imagination – what I like to call ‘faith’, whether it’s of fundamentalists, neoconservatives, atheists, or what have you – and reject any real cognizance of the world around you, to keep maintaining there’s no other sentient life out there. In other words, for most people, to keep saying humans are the only sentient species is an exercise either in semantics of degrees or of solipsism. I don’t have time to create an imaginary world around me – the real one is handier. TED videos consistently maintain touch with ideas that correspond to reality.

On top of that, 2hrs may not be enough, given the lines in poorer neighborhoods (like the lines at the post office, they’re longer the farther you get from the cul de sac). And again, while a salaried worker or a desk worker may be able to be flexible, make up the time, or whatever, a poor hourly worker may have to leave the lines without voting just to get back to work on time, or risk getting written up or fired.

Votes, like so much else, belong to the everyone but the poor.

Personally, I don’t vote. I’m not interested in US politics, except as an external, cultural phenomenon. But depriving the poor of a vote, while the middle class, with “nicer” jobs or “Joe the plumber” self-employment can do their civic duty, is obscene. If you’re an employer, however small, and you’re thinking like Mr. “Can’t afford it”, I’ll say this to you: If you’ve got any ethical and moral sense – hell, if you’re worried about them faking the time, and you’ve got any sense – you’ll drive your people to the polls if they want to go.

It’s fundamentally contrary to the American legal and political system, and to ethics and morality, to deprive the poor of a vote in this society, and businesses that reap the rewards of existing in it should be shamed, boycotted, spat upon, and driven out, who do not provide adequate and reasonable means to ensure all their employees may vote.

If they really don’t want to vote, our system provides for that too. More power to them. But if they do, and you’re holding them back, you’ve blasphemed against the thing from which you draw your existence and your own livelihood, and may it turn on you and devour you accordingly.

The poor are one of the chief reasons, ends, and meanings of work. To relieve, uphold, and sustain the poor is the singular priviledge and responsibility of those who receive the blessings of prosperity. This is, perhaps, never more clearly played out than on election day on which, at least ostensibly, the poor are allowed to determine their destiny. Work ensures this, and work must defend and protect this.

We’ve got almost half of the $1000 needed to fund their orphanage food program. If ten people give $60, they’re funded! I first got involved with direct giving because of the New Futures Orphanage. I was scouring the net, looking for a way to reach the poor directly on limited funds, when I came across the [ blog ] run by volunteers at New Futures and knew that I had to help.

Recently, the landlord sold the orphanage out from under the children, who had to be taken to a new location that doesn’t have electricity. So they need to raise money to get 12volt

battery-powered lighting installed, buy toilets, and invest in chickens, fish, and plants as sustainable sources of food, instead of living only on rice from small donations trickling in. The project has established a funding goal of $1000, and we’re almost half of the way there. I’m asking you to help. Take the cost of a night out, or a new video game, or a month of cable TV, and give directly to them for this need. Please.

…be their Ark. The Oxfam Emergency Fund: Donate to help victims of the Myanmar Cyclone. Those who are least like us, who are not our people, who are most distant from our daily cares, are our strangers. Love is tested not by it’s application to those who are most like us, but to those most estranged.

Choose a child from the orphanage photo below, hold him or her in your mind, and picture what eating all year long might do for his mind, his health, and his opportunities. Now picture him wondering every day if there will be rice today. It’s easy to do the right thing: give directly, so 100% of the funds go to the orphanage, which is run by volunteers, take it as a tax deduction (they email you a receipt automatically), and you break even, but their lives are changed. Christ reward you according to you charity. — Daniel

She’d come upon an orphanage there that needed volunteers to teach some English to the children. Teachers would come through, and some would stay a while and do this, and she was captivated and decided to stay for much longer. I was captivated too, and I looked, and they needed $900 in small gifts – that’s all they were asking for last year, and it was being given in small gifts ($25, $35, $45 at a time) through [ givemeaning.org ] a site that serves as the vehicle for giving directly to such small charities.

They finally met their fundraising goal, which was used to provide some basic things to the orphanage, like cinder block walls and a roof to enclose the toilet. I read the updates from Claire, who was giving her time there. She reported on how the children were doing, their improving skills, what this means for their future. I read what the children thought about their situation, and their hopes for their futures; each one is an individual. I knew I had to help.

The poor are Christ to us. They are the icon, the image. They are the means by which we are saved, by being filled with love. Apart from them, I know I at least cannot be saved. They are the ones of whom Christ said, “inasmuch as you have done with your riches to the least of these, who are my brothers, you have so done to me in my impoverishment”.

Recently, the landlord sold the orphanage and the children had to be taken to a facility that doesn’t have electricity. So they need to raise money to get 12volt battery-powered lighting installed and survive with the soaring food costs. The project has established a funding goal of $1000. I’m asking you to help me help them. Take the cost of a night out, or a new video game, or a month of cable TV, and give directly to them, for this need.

They are [ here ].

Direct Giving defined: Give in reality, not in theory. Give to people, not to ideas.