Progressives to ban slavecreatures — unless you promise to eat them
“I’m sure you’ll be satisfied with Silver Blaze,” says the distinguished gentleman in the cigar lounge of San Francisco’s exclusive Bohemian Club. “The horse has run well at both Golden Gate and Del Mar, and you’re getting him at a bargain price.”
“Time will tell,” smiles the buyer, handing over a handsome check.
“More than you know,” replies the seller, flashing a badge. “I’m agent Watson, Municipal Animal Anti-Slavery Enforcement, and I’m afraid you’re under arrest for trafficking in animals in violation of San Francisco city ordinance … unless, of course, you can prove you intended to EAT Silver Blaze.”
If the scenario sounds insane, just turn elsewhere in your daily paper, these days.
The initial idea, it appears, was to simply ban “puppy mills and kitten factories” in the city of San Francisco. But this year’s incarnation of the Humane Pet Acquisition Proposal hopes to see the city’s Board of Supervisors “protect” from human ownership everything from Great Danes to goldfish.
“If it flies, crawls, runs, swims or slithers, you would not be able to buy it in the city named for the patron saint of animals,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
Representatives of the $45-billion to $50-billion-a-year pet industry call the San Francisco proposal “by far the most radical ban we’ve seen.” Animal activists say it will save small but important lives, and end needless suffering.
“Why fish? Why not fish?” asks Philip Gerrie, a member of the city’s Commission of Animal Control and Welfare and a co-author of the proposal. “From Descartes on up, in the Western mind set, fish and other nonhuman animals don’t have feelings, they don’t have emotions, we can do whatever we want to them. If we considered them living beings, we would deal with them differently. É Our culture sanctions this, treating them as commodities and expendable.”
Actually, America has led the way in banning gratuitous cruelty to animals. But we’re way beyond that, here.
The commission voted earlier this month to send a proposal to the Board of Supervisors recommending a ban on the sale of all pets in the city. Snake food was almost exempted from the proposal. After all, pythons have to eat, and they like their lunch alive. But at a heated meeting, Commissioner Pam Hemphill questioned how it could be humane to sell live animals to be fed to other live animals.
Other than people, you understand.
It’s specifically legal in San Francisco to sell live animals for eventual human consumption, so — rather than offend Asian minorities who consider this a valuable part of their cultural heritage — the proposed ban would not stop markets from selling live fish, poultry, turtles or seafood for that purpose.
Under the proposal, in San Francisco, you wouldn’t be allowed to buy a dog or cat to keep as a pet — but you WOULD be allowed to buy one, so long as you could show you intended to eat it.
Residents of the city, of course, merely consider that they’re “ahead of the curve” on such issues.
In 2005, San Francisco voters banned the possession of handguns for private use. The measure also reportedly prohibited the manufacture, sale, or distribution of any type of firearms within the city limits — though I can’t find any evidence city police officers ever turned in theirs. In 2008, the California Supreme Court decided the ban was unconstitutional.
But the San Franciscans had only just begun. In 2006, the U.S. Navy decommissioned the USS Iowa, one of the biggest battleships that ever sailed. It wanted to give the ship to San Francisco to use as a tourist attraction, but the board of supervisors voted against accepting it. USA Today reported: “Supervisors who oppose the offer say they don’t want a ship from a military in which openly gay men and women cannot serve. They also say they don’t want it because they oppose the Iraq war, which city voters condemned in a 2004 ballot question.”
California banned smoking in most indoor public places in 1994, and in bars and nightclubs in 1998, but San Francisco has (of course) gone much further. The most recent extension of its citywide smoking ban, passed in March 2010, prohibits lighting up at ATMs, while waiting in line, and at outdoor cafes. The ban passed the board of supervisors unanimously; anti-smoking zealots hope to expand it even further.
In November 2010, targeting McDonald’s “Happy Meals,” the board of supervisors voted by a veto-proof margin to prohibit restaurants from giving out free toys with meals whose calories, fat, and sugar exceeded set levels. If a restaurant DOES want to give out a free toy with a meal, it must also come with fruit and vegetables.
Aww.
And activists have gotten enough signatures on a proposed measure banning the practice of circumcision to place it on this fall’s election ballot.
Now THERE’S a job I’d like to see advertised: San Francisco Municipal Circumcision Inspector; LGBTQ and all others invited to apply.
O brave new world, that has such people in it!
July 2nd, 2011 at 12:01 pm
I wouldn’t like to see the inspector; I wouldn’t want to legitimize circumcision. Too bad…I thought Sanfra N’cisco was a good place for outlawing it. Now I see. The Franciscans only outlawed ripping genitalia after everything else was taken. You can see where people’s priorities are, when crotch-hacking comes as an afterthought.
I was going to call it preputiophobic amputation.
July 3rd, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Ok, but here’s the next question…
Why does anyone who objects to any of that still live in San Francisco? Seems to me that if any of them really cared, it would soon be a ghost town.
Leave them to it. In fact, invite all the folks who approve to move there soon.
We usually have just about as much damned foolishness in our lives as we are prepared to tolerate. Want less? Don’t tolerate it – even if it means voting with your feet.
July 4th, 2011 at 7:38 am
Vin,
Love your work, though not your opinion on this issue.
It is libertarian to respect life, not just human life. Holding an animal captive for companionship or simply for visual display, as done with fish, is cruel. People should respect an animal’s right to live amongst its own kind, start a family, and live in its natural habitat.
Animals used to not be kept indoors. I believe some “royal” person in England decided to bring an animal indoors, and that just ruined it for all of them. Deep down people know their dogs prefer a natural habitat in that the “owners” who live in cities go out of their way to find some plot of grass for their dogs to do their business.
Each time I see someone holding a dog with a leash or see fish suffering in a tank with zero privacy and of course no space, I think how lucky we are that human slavery actually fell out of favor. Alas we still have massive taxation, another form of slavery, and dare I say that if people started to realize animals are not here as companions or entertainment, then they might realize other humans are not here their tax-slaves either.
July 4th, 2011 at 7:39 pm
@ Dave The Doctor, so you identified and spelled out the problem as you see it. Now just what do we do with the population of housecats and dogs?
I disagree with you on domestic animals. There will be a dog and cat in my life and home for as long as I am able to take care of them. They take care of me and I can tell they like me as well. Especially with a cat, they will be certain to let you know whether you’re accepted as their home or not. No matter who pays for the home, with a cat it belongs to them not the people who happen to live in it.
July 5th, 2011 at 8:05 am
Yep, Missouri is wrestling with similar puppy mill legislation right now, after first being approved through a state-wide referendum, and subsequently ignored/repealed by the state legislature.
And San Francisco’s city council is legendary. Can’t wait to see what they dream up next.
July 5th, 2011 at 12:56 pm
To expand on MamaLiberty’s comment, why don’t we just kick Kalifornia out of the Union? That would solve a boatload of Amerika’s problems (though certainly not enough of them to make serious progress in the bringing the nation back to its constitutional roots).
July 10th, 2011 at 9:16 pm
Actually, the PRK, Illinois, and New York (maybe just NYC?) ought to all be kicked out of the union. Perhaps they could form their own liberal version of a country. I think it would be a short experiment. 🙂
July 22nd, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Wanna buy a duck?
Sorry, Vin. I just could not resist.
5GW
Speaker
(a “Marxist” with heavy eyebrows)
July 22nd, 2011 at 7:25 pm
Vin, I’m going to have to disagree with your comparison (and conflation) between laws against owning pets, and laws against circumcision. Here’s the bottom line, a foreskin is normal, healthy body part, like an ear, or an eyelid. The foreskin is NOT a birth defect. It is not a deformity, a disease, or a genetic anomaly akin to a 6th finger or a cleft palate.
Amputating it at birth constitutes assault and mutilation of a non-consenting individual, namely an infant boy, in order to satisfy the aesthetic, religious, or other sorts of neurotic desires of the parent(s). It’s also a violation of a doctor’s hippocratic oath, in which he is supposed to act in accordance with the best interests of his patient. In this case, his patient is the infant, not the parents.
Mind you, when the infant boy grows up, if he wants to cut off his foreskin THEN, or his entire penis for that matter, well, then, more power to him. I would certainly oppose a law forbidding an ADULT to have himself circumcised. But it is not something that an ethical society should be doing to non-consenting children. For the same reason, I would support the right of an adult to cut off his own ears, or inject himself with heroin, but these are not things that anyone, even a parent, has the right to do to their child.
And, btw, that also includes the increasing practice of the arrogant maggots in human form who refer to themselves as ‘teachers’ of compelling non-c0nsenting children to take the drug Ritalin in order to treat the phony disease ‘ADD’ which consists of nothing more than normal behaviors that the ‘teachers’ happen to find personally inconvenient.