I think of the anti-war movement in Britain, where conservative Islamic mullahs marched alongside gay and lesbian activists. Normally, these two groups would have little common ground and would have trouble working together. But in the face of a truly monstrous injustice, they showed solidarity. I believe fur and factory farming constitutes such an injustice, worthy of creating a broad movement that can overlook the idiosyncracies of individual member organizations.

Currently, we have a pup on our property that we’re trying to find a home for. He was given to us at the farmers market by someone in our area at whose property the pup had been dropped. The gentleman didn’t want to take him to the local “kill” shelter, so we brought him home with us to “foster” while we look for a home for him.

Problem is, he’ll chase my poultry if I let him loose. So until we find a good home for him, we have to keep him on a tie-down. If we let him run loose, we’ll have to kill him for killing the poultry and/or for ham-stringing the sheep and goats. (We raise pastured poultry, lamb, and goats for eggs and meat.) So we keep him on a tie-down away from the livestock until we can find him a home. (If you know anyone in Central Texas who’d like to adopt a heeler-cross pup, have them get in touch with me.)

This kind of thing began to wear on her so much that she formed an organization to get at the root causes of pet overpopulation and pet surrender. It’s become a fantastic animal welfare resource in Indiana, and aggressively seeks to enable and complement the wonderful work that pet rescues and shelters do. I’d encourage any animal welfare enthusiast to take a look at their website, because it would be a great model for other areas.

PETA and the Humane Society are in two distinctly different categories. Your analogy, to me, is like saying that Al Qaeda is representative of Islam, when in fact it is a POLITICAL movement that likes to use religion as an excuse.

PETA uses extremely unethical practices. Not only do they use scare tactics for children (”Your Daddy kills fish. Don’t leave Daddy alone with your cat or dog.”), but they also employ euthanization, where actual RESCUE organizations find homes through adoption and/or foster care.

But no matter what the rest of their ethics are, the most troublesome for me are their tactics with children ages 6yo and up. Even Earth First *never* went to the extreme of terrorizing children.

PETA enthusiastically endorses a lot of foul messages about women, in the judgement of many reasonable feminists, and I remember a post here not so long ago where a lot of women pointed that out to you, with illustrative examples. Whether you think of women as “them” or as “us” is, I suppose, up to you.

Critical, what the others said.

I presume you grew up in an environment where you didn’t have to worry as a child about the roof over your head or food on the table. Correct me if I’m wrong. There’s no shame in that- you’re aware of your (good) situation, which frees your time to volunteer and do god work on behalf of lives that aren’t so fortunate.

Critical,
There’s nothing wrong with being well-off. There’s only something wrong with it if one does not appreciate it, one’s not willing to work for it, one’s not willing to be generous, if one feel that it is something they deserve no matter what, and if one feels that other people do not deserve to be comfortable. You seem to fit into the latter.

Feminists are a varied bunch. Don’t pigeonhole all of us into your little mental idea of what feminists are.