All Earthlings … (10/18/15)
We are alive today to celebrate Love … When most of us think about Love, we think about our wives, we think about our husbands, we think about our children, we think about our friends … Well, when I think about Love I also think about people all around the world — from all creeds and cultures, and all races, and all ages, and all sexual orientations, and all genders … I think about all my brothers and sisters with whom we are allies even though we have never met; whose struggles with whom we are aligned even though we will never meet.
Women, and immigrants, and people of color, and people with disabilities, and LGBT community members — AND ANIMALS … Yes, let us have the courage & the decency to remember that animals too, are a part of humanity’s still-overarching system of oppression — a facet of which is called speciesism. Just like racism & sexism & homophobia, speciesism too is a vile & entrenched form of discrimination. It is the assumption that animals are inferior to human animals based on their species alone — that their fears & their feelings as such do not matter; that their lives are of little value and that their suffering is of little consequence.
My Friends, almost without exception we have all been told at one time or another that we are inferior — maybe because of our race, maybe because of our gender, maybe because f our sexual orientation, maybe becasue of our disability, maybe just becasue of the way we looked or talked or acted … And because we ALL know how it feels to be abused and neglected; becasue we ALL know how it feels to be abandoned & mistreated; because we ALL know how it feels to be victims of injustice — we have a moral duty to stand up for ALL those who today are suffering the same travesties of neglect & abandonment & abuse & injustice & cruelty.
And it is in this far greater sense that we simply must remember that we are ALL allies with our still-abused & egregiously-mistreated animal cousins; animals who care & feel & know & fear & love just like you & I do — animals that as such deserve our consideration and our respect — and yes, our protection.
Animals LOVE … They — just like you & I — are individuals who long to live full and meaningful lives of joy & tenderness … As such, let us have the courage & the decency to remember what it is to TRULY Love — by letting ALL the animals in our lives know the same.
Amen … Let it be so.
(~ inspired by Raffaelle Ciavatta)
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