Wayne Pacelle’s blog of March 17, 2015
by Lee Hall
Barrett Duke, a founding fellow of the Research Institute at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, on March 17, 2015 received accolades from Humane Society of the United States president Wayne Pacelle in his personal blog “A Humane Nation.”
Explained Pacelle, “It’s part of my commitment, and that of The HSUS, to integrate – or to reintegrate – other voices and perspectives within the humane movement.”
Humane movement?
This is the same Barrett Duke who warned Baptist Press readers: “Imagine what will happen if the government feels compelled to indoctrinate our children about the new civil right of ‘same-sex marriage.'” But Duke didn’t leave it to the imagination:
“If the radical homosexual agenda is codified into law,” Duke said, “our own government will be arrayed against us and our struggle to protect our religious freedom. We can fight this battle now or we can fight it later, but we are going to fight this battle.”
Banana peel
Duke insists laws to prevent hate crimes will be used “to harass those who hold religious convictions about the sinfulness of homosexual behavior.” To Duke, the Supreme Court’s examination of gay marriage in Hollingsworth v. Perry was the banana peel on the slippery slope to mother-son matings.
Barrett Duke
HSUS president Pacelle pointed out that Duke’s group endorsed a Tennessee bill that raises penalties for attending animal fights. Maybe somebody needs to tell HSUS that Dr. Duke has no use for legislation unless it co-incidentally fits the Southern Baptist Convention’s world view. In The Radical Homosexual Agenda and the Threat to Religious Liberty, Duke exhorts readers: “We must stand up and protect our freedom to believe and to practice our faith according to God’s leading, not governments’.”
Pacelle wrote: “Voices like Dr. Duke’s are extremely important to our movement: the ERLC [Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission] engages in public policy on behalf of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest Protestant religion in the United States, with over 16 million members in over 46,000 churches.”
The logic seems to be that if a hater belongs to a group with “over 16 million members” and has anything in common with you, it’s time to kiss up.
Subjugation & slaughter
“I was struck by a powerful exposition,” Pacelle declared, wherein Barrett Duke proclaimed “Biblical truths” about animals. In Duke’s piece, animals are property of God: “He has allowed humans to subjugate and even to consume them, but that does not include wanton abuse.”
Subjugate away! Slaughter on! For Heaven’s sake, just don’t degrade Tennessee with animal fighting.
Concerned that animal welfare is unjustifiably pegged by right-leaning people as a liberal cause, Pacelle gently nudged the powerful expositor: “What is the sort of approach on animal welfare that puts conservatives more at ease?”
Duke responded by recommending allegiance to a hierarchical view of creation, with humans above other animals. Pacelle apparently agreed. Regarding the growing body of work deconstructing that hierarchical model, Pacelle said, “I don’t think this helped much in our outreach to faith-based people.”
Rusty the golden retriever
Pacelle then reprinted Duke’s “powerful exposition.” It invoked “a golden retriever named Rusty that I got for my children in 2004…the dog everyone should have—loving, playful, and eager to please.”
After the saccharine opening, Duke offered several reasons that animals matter. Noah’s Ark, for example. Plus, Psalm 104 says God “causes” the grass to grow for the cattle.” So, Duke claimed, “God isn’t simply passively watching nature take care of its own.”
Animals bring glory to God by their very existence, Duke asserts, and have “innocence and vulnerability”—concepts connected to the human impulse to establish a criminal-justice system.
On Their Own Terms: Bringing Animal-Rights Philosophy Down to Earth, by Lee Hall, Nectar Bat Press (777 Post Road, Suite 205, Darien, CT 06820), 2010. 330 pages, paperback. $17.95.
Yet Duke believes animal sacrifice, as practiced in Biblical times, was a sensible requirement: “Either the guilty person or an acceptable substitute must answer for human sin.” God therefore created the sacrificial system in Israel and “commanded that this system regularly kill innocent animals in order to satisfy the demands of his divine justice.”
Such is the commentary now enshrined on the personal blog of president of the Humane Society of the United States. According to Duke, when it comes to biblical references, “we are to accept their infallible guidance and truth.”
That would explain why the “Southern Baptists’ man in Washington” also states: “Our faith and the radical homosexual agenda are on track for a cataclysmic conflict.”
In short, Barrett Duke is a merchant of hate. And just as you can’t say your chosen animal processors are “humane,” simply because some are worse to animals than others, you can’t say, just because some hate mongers are not the worst, that your preferred hate monger is humane.
________________________________________
Lee Hall, an adjunct professor of environmental law, is the author of numerous books and articles on animal rights, including the new On Their Own Terms: The Handbook. Animal Rights for the Classroom and the Community (forthcoming, 2015). On Twitter: @Animal_Law
Edith J. Goode & her lifelong companion Alice Morgan Wright (HSUS photo)
A historical postscript:
The humane movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries accepted, lauded, and celebrated the leadership of the openly lesbian Carolyn Earle White in the 19th century, the lesbian couple Alice Morgan Wright & Edith J. Goode, whom Humane Society of the U.S. historian celebrates at http://www.humanesociety.org/about/history/goode-and-wright-page1.html, and the openly if quietly gay couple Eric Hansen and William Alan Swallow.
Caroline Earle White
Among the organizations these leaders founded and/or later headed were the Women’s Humane Society, the American Anti-Vivisection Society, the National Humane Education Society, the humane foundations named after Wright and Goode, the Missouri Humane Society, the American Humane Association, and the Massachusetts SPCA.
The American SPCA and the American Humane Association also had other openly if quietly gay leadership.
If the humane movement of a much less culturally tolerant era could demonstrate tolerance and acceptance to that extent then, how can it be that the president of the Humane Society of the U.S. embraces and lauds a Barrett Duke today?
––Merritt Clifton, editor, ANIMAL 24-7
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I think the pro-animal movement can probably borrow a few quotes from the Bible. I don’t have a problem with that. Of course the entire Bible is not that pro animal. There is animal sacrifice and abuse.
That said, I don’t think HSUS should try to be friends with an anti-gay evangelist. It’s nice the guy is against dog fighting, but that’s no reason to make him your buddy, considering his anti-gay message. Should HSUS be friends with a vegan chef who is also pro-child touching? No. You can be against dog fighting without having to support a hater. Leave that person out of it.
Great essay/analysis Lee. I’d like to see you post it to FB.
“No, of course I won’t discuss eliminating inhumane practices with you, because I dislike your politics. Sure, the animals might suffer because of it, but it’s for a noble cause: my ideological pride. A victory for animals!”
We must always be willing to reach out to our enemies to secure improvements for animal welfare, even if they are contemptible people with contemptible views. It is possible to be allies in one arena while having fundamental differences in another. That’s something that the ideologues in Congress have forgotten, and you see where that’s gotten us: paralysis, and the continuation of the status quo.
The politics of animal welfare are no different.
In a time when even dogfighters loudly proclaim their opposition to dogfighting, the opposition expressed by Barrett Duke is of little or no political significance. Inhumane behavior, meanwhile, is a continuum, with both human and animal victims. Humane legislation is not advanced by making common cause with those who inflame inhumane attitudes.
Come on Merritt, you’re smarter than that. You really believe that the Tennessee General Assembly isn’t influenced by a leader in the Southern Baptist church? Barrett’s support has been incredibly influential in building support for efforts to save both dogs and roosters from animal fighting operations.
I also disagree with your apparent position that there should be litmus test of acceptable views one must hold before joining coalitions to help animals. Animals are in dire need of help and refusing assistance from influential people, just because you don’t like their views on a different issue, only serves to prove that you are prioritizing other issues above the needs of animals.
A diverse movement of people from all walks of life is going to make far more progress than a movement of purists who insist that everyone think the same about a range of social issues.
Is Lee Hall or Merritt Clifton demanding that the Human Rights Campaign only serve vegan meals at their banquets? Or do gay rights groups get away with not backing animals while animal groups are vilified for not demanding our supporters all think alike on other issues? Why the double standard?
The activity of LGBT Compassion against live markets in the San Francisco Bay area by itself would tend to belie J.P. Goodwin’s concluding paragraph. Alliances among humane organizations and some churches accomplished less against the live markets in more than 100 years than LGBT Compassion has accomplished by enlisting the support of the gay community just since 2010.
Concerning flirtations with the far right & hate mongers in general, I have done quite a bit of research into the humane movement dalliance with fascism in the 1930s. Most of the major humane organizations of the era, in both the U.S. & Europe, were seduced by the Nazi & Italian fascist posturing as being pro-animal, even though they were actually anything but.
About five years ago went through the 36 editions of the National Humane Review published in 1933-1935, to see specifically what they said about the Nazis & fascists, as then the only national organization in the U.S.
Since the National Humane Review was published by the American Humane Association, and AHA had a very strong pro-human rights outlook, including several editorials against lynching during those years, and strong earlier positions against eugenics, I anticipated that the AHA would be much less inclined to favor Nazis & fascists than — for example — the RSPCA, which leaned in their direction more than just a little.
But I still found these examples, with no criticism whatever of Nazis & fascists in any of these three years:
# Article praising Mussolini, April 1933, p. 17.
# Article praising several items of Nazi legislation, January 1934, page 26, in fairly broad & general terms.
# Article praising Nazi legislation, February 1934, page 2. This involved a law against cropping the ears of German shepherds, Dobermans, and several other German breeds favored by the Nazis.
# Two articles praising Mussolini, March 1935, pages 15 and 23. The second item was translated and reprinted from the Austrian SPCA magazine.
After World War II broke out, the AHA & National Humane Review apologized all over hell’s half acre for having praised Hitler & Mussolini, but the perception that the humane movement had prominently favored them & had acted as collaborators continued to inhibit humane progress for at least a generation.
This is, again, another unacceptable Wayne Pacelle/HSUS case of the tail wagging the dog. He sold out to the egg industry, Wolfgang Puck, and animal agriculture in general., They sponsored the Denver meat-eating events. These are no longer exceptions at HSUS but the norm. Study these and other examples at humanemyth.org. They crossed the line long ago and in doing so corrupted vegan messaging, definitions, goals and public education on the issues. This is not about bringing conservatives into the camp; it’s about inviting far larger, more powerful and moneyed people and organizations into what was once the core nonhuman animal institution of IHSUS – The Inhumane Society of the United States. Bringing a leading bigot into the IHUS fold is just another, equal example of that organization losing touch with reality and its moral responsibilities.
I live in a part of the country in which religion is a big part of everyday life. Looking at my own extended family, I see people who believe that God and family are the only entities that should matter to you, and caring about “lesser” things–in particular, animals are considered a “lesser” thing–is rejected as a waste of time and sinful.
This type of belief system is more common than we’d hope, and I understand the desire to “break in” to the conservative Christian community to help introduce some at least basic animal welfare tenants. However, there is a right and wrong way to go about it. The fact is, these folks are a very tough nut to crack, and by highlighting bigoted individuals, we’re alienating the progressive people who are far more likely to accept and support animal welfare.
Opposing felony-level animal abuse isn’t much of a stretch (although I’ve heard the aforementioned family members on several occasions mock the idea of imprisoning people for animal cruelty)–it’s like saying you’re opposed to armed robbery or selling heroin outside schools. It’s a given.
I tend to agree with Will that this is less about bringing conservatives into the camp than it is about romancing more influential and moneyed people and their networks. This, while the ‘humane’ sector gives its blessing to one of the leaders who, collectively, drive so many people to despair and worse because their families reject and shun them. Gratitude to Animals 24-7 for publishing this and enabling feedback.
It’s unfortunate so many animal lovers are up in arms over this issue. The irony of people who eat animals ( infringing on the animals rights) wagging their fingers at Duke and now Pacelle is priceless.
But more to the point the HSUS role is to provide an animal welfare platform for advocates to come together for our fellow animals. There are many other platforms available to address human politics and civil rights issues but this isn’t one of them. As much as it might surprise some of us our fellow animals don’t care about our human issues and Pacelles role is to speak for them.
We have built an entire for profit industry that gives its victims no rights, uses the victims reproductive systems to cause untold suffering and death, steals children from their mothers so humans can eat cheese and with all that people are taking offense to some assholes words ( he’s not advocating for any violence/killing of humans for profit or otherwise ) who might be able to help bring an end to this nightmare. SMH. I worry for our fellow animals.
Lee Hall is a longtime vegan; Will Anderson is a longtime vegan; I am a longtime vegan and the second generation of veggies in a three-generation veg family. This is not, in short, a matter of “people who eat animals…wagging their fingers at Duke”; it is a matter of people who have spent their lives working for both animal rights & human rights taking issue with HSUS embracing an individual who has substantively advanced neither, indeed opposes the whole notion of animals having intrinsic rights of any sort, and has vehemently opposed extending even basic human rights to a small but significant sector of society.