Veganism Is An Act Of

Forty-two Years After Dr. King Was Murdered, We Are Still A Nation Of Inequality. People Of Color, Women, Gays, Lesbians, And Others Are Still Treated As Second-class Citizens. Yes, Things Have Changed But We Have Still Not Achieved Equality Among All Humans. And Nonhuman Animals Continue To Be Chattel Property Without Any Inherent Value.

Humans Treat Animals As Things That Exist As Means To Human Ends. That's Morally Wrong. Sexism Promotes The Idea That Women Are Things That Exist As Means To The Ends Of Men. That's Morally Wrong. We Need To Stop Treating All Persons - Whether Human Or Nonhuman - As Things.

I Find It Very Annoying That So Many Animal Advocates Talk About The Difficulty Of Being Vegan. Many Animal Advocates Are Inclined To Make The Issue Their Suffering And Not The Animals' Suffering, And I Suppose That Accounts For Part Of The Reason That Veganism Is Portrayed As Such A "sacrifice." And Many Animal Advocates Are Not Vegans, Or Are "flexible Vegans," Which Means That They Do Not Observe Veganism At All Or Not Consistently, And Emphasizing The Supposed Difficulty Of Veganism Is Part Of Justifying Their Own Behavior.

We Proclaim Human Intelligence To Be Morally Valuable Per Se Because We Are Human. If We Were Birds, We Would Proclaim The Ability To Fly As Morally Valuable Per Se. If We Were Fish, We Would Proclaim The Ability To Live Underwater As Morally Valuable Per Se. But Apart From Our Obviously Self-interested Proclamations, There Is Nothing Morally Valuable Per Se About Human Intelligence.

We Can No More Justify Using Nonhumans As Human Resources Than We Can Justify Human Slavery. Animal Use And Slavery Have At Least One Important Point In Common: Both Institutions Treat Sentient Beings Exclusively As Resources Of Others. That Cannot Be Justified With Respect To Humans; It Cannot Be Justified With Respect To Nonhumans—however “humanely” We Treat Them.