animal rights

A philosophy that suggests some or all animals have the right to possess their own lives. Contrary to popular opinion, animal rights activists do not ask for voting rights for chickens or pigs. Rather they ask that animals not be used for food, entertainment, medical research or clothing. Some activists maintain that there is a distinction between sentient, or self-aware animals, and those with a large degree of self-awareness are to be afforded the right to possess their own lives. Animal rights is also largely tied to dietary lifestyles such as vegetarianism and veganism which abhor the consumption of meat products in accordance with the principles of animal rights.

Animal rights movements are not the same as animal welfare which take into account, the suffering of animals (and seek to prohibit it) but do not grant them specific rights

Formerly believed to be an idea in which animals should be equal to people, it is now widely recognized to be a belief where animals should receive higher consideration than humans.

Animal Rights means that humans are forbidden to hunt and/or eat animals, and are forbidden to use animals for ANY reason....
while animals are allowed to hunt and kill, as well as exploit other animals (ants exploiting aphids for their honeydew, for example).

Under this rule, animals are also allowed to kill a human for ANY reason (including, but not limited to: predator instinct, invasion of property, protection of young, etc.) while no human is allowed to kill an animal for any reason, not even to rescue his children from a bear attack.

When it comes to Animal Rights, George Orwell said it best in Animal Farm:
"All animals are equal but some are more equal than others."

A belief in which people feel that animals should have at least a few right, and shouldn't have to suffer for the pleasure of humans.
obviously stereo-typical people are claiming that animal-rights activists are phsycho, and that non animals rights people are red necks.
neither is true.
animal rights activists just believe that humans dont NEED to kill animals. animals that hunt are usually pure carnivore, which means they dont have the ability to eat both.
people that dont believe animals should have rights are normal people that have their own beliefs.

the main reason for animal rights is to end the suffering of animals. they feel just like we do. when something blinks, breathes, and flinches when hit, it does have feeling.

A philosophy that claims that humans are inherently "moral" animals and have an "ethical" duty to consider the "rights" of animals. Naive at best, they ignore that the concepts of "morality," "ethics," and "rights" are merely inventions of the human mind and do not exist beyond the man-made implications of actions of human beings that only other humans "perceive."

"Right" and "wrong" are psychological fabrications of the human brain and are in no way bound in the world of natural law. "Morality" only exists as far as there is a will of human beings to act upon it. The idea that humans "must" abide by a moral principle that ensures the "rights" of animals is as much a falsehood as the idea that whites are superior to blacks.

A "morality" that says that animal experimentation and consumption is "justifiable" is no more or less a creation of the human mind than any "morality" that says that such activities and "wrong." As sure as the concept of "language" itself, these are ideas that we create in our animal brains whose only "inherent" properties are that fact that they are absolutely meaningless outside of human perception.

"Ethics" and "morality" only exist because the past ten thousand years of evolution have given humanity the ability to invent psychological concepts and apply them to the world around them. If the human physiology lead to a brain that was less "intelligent" than it currently is, then no such arguments of "right" or "wrong" would even exist.

Just so as "morality" and "ethics" and mere human inventions, so are the notions of "freedom," "prejudice," "bias," "racism," "sexism," and "equality."

Animals do not have inherent natural "rights" because nothing does - the idea of "rights" is a human psychological device that exists solely inside of the realm of human perception and action, nothing else.

Again, take a few thousand years of evolution away from the human anatomy, and none of these notions would ever have come to exist - and yes, we'd still be eating animals and wearing their furs and nobody would complain.

Animal rights is a movement primarily dating back to the late 1800's.

Much like the civil rights movement, or the women’s liberation movement, the animal rights movement is a movement working towards the social recognition of the rights of all sentient creatures to live free from unnecessary human imposed suffering.

This often means that animal rights activists practice vegetarianism or veganism, NOT for ignorant reasons such as "humans shouldn't kill anything but all other animals can kill whatever they want to"...but rather, many animal rights activists realize that we, humans, are "omnivores" (this is a big word for some of you rednecks but bear with us) and as such, it is not *NECESSARY* to consume animal products. Since the consumption of animal products notoriously involves the immense suffering of the animals from which the products are derived, and since we are "omnivores", many animal rights activists are vegetarian or vegan.

The Animal Rights movement, again, like the Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation movement, is frequently criticized by ignorant and insecure individuals who are deathly afraid of any form of social change, or any “new fangled ideas” that might challenge their way of life (such as encouraging them to not wear fur, or not kick their dog). Animal Rights activists know that it might be hard for you to stop kicking your dog....but that still doesn’t make it OK to do it. You might not even WANT to stop kicking your dog...but...that still doesn’t make it OK for you to do it. Because quite frankly, your dog is a living creature that can feel pleasure and pain, and has a right to live free of unnecessary pain just like people do. That is why we have laws that uphold animal rights. For example, if you decide to violate your dog’s right to live free from unnecessary suffering and you kick him, you forfeit your right to live outside of a jail cell. If you believe that people should not kick their dog, then you believe in a bit of animal rights too.

Animal Rights: Albert Einstein was into it. Gandhi was into it. Abraham Lincoln was into it. Immanuel Kant was into it. Mark Twain was into it. Leonardo Da Vinci was into it. Dr. Albert Schweitzer was into it. Peter Singer wrote the book on it. Hell...even Moby is into it.
But red-necks and dog-kickers know better....and they are against it.
Too bad for them though...because social movements never go away...they only get stronger. Welcome to Animal Rights.

The rights of animals. Humans, besides having superior intelligence to most animals, have nothing that sets them apart besides their need to wear clothes and cause global warming and genocide. Animals feel pain too, and each animal's life is worth just as much, no less and no more, than a human's life. Why are we better than them? We aren't. Sure, they have no "purpose" but neither do we. What's our purpose? To start wars and cut down trees? Give me a break.

They have the right to be tasty