Columbia is Bleeding – Nellie McKay
Nailing Descartes to the Wall / (Liquid) Meat is Still Murder – Propagandhi
Okay, let’s get one thing clear. I am angry about Prop 8. It sucks. It’s a cruel reminder that on a day when the nation made a powerful gesture against one long history of discrimination, the largest state in the nation (a liberal bastion, one would believe) enshrined yet more discrimination for another group.
It lends a certain bitterness to what should otherwise be a joyous occasion. It’s one of my top priorities to help get this country to a place where laws like this are torn apart and those who supported them are made to recognize their bigotry for what it is. That means fighting this all over again in two years when the arc of justice has brought us just a little bit closer to equality. It means not giving up. It means not accepting that a bare majority has the power to deny the worthiness of love shared between two people.
That said, I had an interaction which troubled me this evening. It’s a material example of a phenomenon I’ve seen online in a number of places (here, here, here, and here for example). The general sentiment was anger that Californians appear to “care more about the rights of chickens than of gays and lesbians.” Now, I know why people latch onto this rhetorical technique. I get it. But I really wish people were a little more self-aware about just how horrific we are as a nation toward farm animals.
Look, I care intensely about gay rights. In 2004 I almost gave up on America because of how much it hurt to see all those marriage bans pass across the country. I’ve talked for years to anyone who would listen about how this issue will make future generations regard us as barbarians, as intolerant buffoons.
But the thing is that all of the reasons why discrimination based on sexual orientation is allowed to continue are at work in our relationship with animals. And while I would never say that “a chicken matters more than a person” I do think there’s a question of scale in what is being discussed. Denial of marriage is hateful and hurtful and depressing and awful. But the horrors of factory farms make me sick to my stomach. It’s cruelty on a scope that transcends description. It’s terrible and depressing and sad and far beyond the scope of what any society that claims to be interested in establishing a moral order.
I know they’re not people, but there really ought to be a bare minimum of exploitation we’re willing to unleash on other sentient beings, especially when the sole advantage is to make it 2% cheaper. Factory farms are horrific precisely because they displace all responsibility for caring about this stuff. They let people consume away with no thought about the disgusting conditions that undergird their dietary habits. It’s a question of putting crass convenience over suffering beyond imagination.
Put another way, factory farms only function because they let people ignore the horrific conditions made possible by the boring routine of daily economic choices. They create barriers that let people remain comfortable in their own place, never having to consider who or what is hurt by their unthinking actions. And in that sense, it’s actually very similar to the problem of gay marriage. Millions of people voted yes on Prop 8 because they couldn’t be bothered to put a human face on the ballot. They felt comfortable treating it as an abstract issue. It didn’t matter that it wouldn’t help them in any measurable way – those that it hurt simply didn’t seem real, or worthy of consideration.
Prop 2 passed not because “people care more about chickens than about gays and lesbians” but rather because it imposed a tremendously small burden on people, while doing small but measurable good for living beings in conditions that are unutterably depressing.
And that’s why it’s so weird to hear people denigrating it. In particular, it’s truly bizarre to hear someone upset about the unfairness of Prop 8 in the next breath declare that they voted against Prop 2 because “it would make eggs cost more.” Because the attitude that lets practices like this and this and this and this continue unabated are just different manifestations of the ones that let people continue to practice discrimination based on sexual orientation.
I’m all for being up in arms about sexual equality. But we can’t pretend that the struggle for a progressive future is over if we achieve that any more than we should think it’s over because one out of 44 presidents is black. There’s still a long way to go, and while we have a lot of things to worry about the way we interact with all the other living beings on this planet needs to be a part of it.