POSTED AT 10:40 PM ON Feb. 2, 2009 | PRINT | Email | SHARE | COMMENTS (5)

I’m thoroughly convinced that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is the new Planned Parenthood.

Let me explain.

Like the beleaguered clinic, PETA often finds itself at the center of controversy without much effort.

Take Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals. In an effort to snap up one of the prime advertising spots for the game, PETA created a television ad that featured white women in lingerie rubbing vegetables on their bodies. The ad was promptly rejected for violating NBC decency standards, but PETA got its 15 minutes of fame anyway.

It doesn’t help that I’m writing about it, too.

Maybe I should amend my earlier comparison. Unlike in the case of Planned Parenthood, where I often feel the need to rush in and defend the clinic, I just wish PETA and other animal rights groups would go away.

Before you accuse me of hating animals, I should probably also mention that I’m a vegetarian. But unlike the insufferable white liberals at PETA, I’m not doing it for the animals. Yes, it’s terrible that animals are exploited for their skin and meat, but all this obscures the fact that actual people are hurt by the meat industry.

A 2005 study by Human Rights Watch, for instance, determined that conditions in many poultry and meat industry plants are hazardous to workers. Undocumented immigrants working in the plants are most vulnerable to such exploitation, since they are afraid of reporting their employers for fear of deportation.

It is no coincidence, then, that a movement dominated by whites ignores this intersection of oppression. In 2005, PETA launched a nationwide tour, “Are Animals the New Slaves?” The campaign compared the lynching of blacks to animal cruelty and juxtaposed images of black men hanging from trees with pictures of slaughtered cows. In response to the controversy, the group’s founder, Ingrid Newkirk, released a statement titled “We are all animals, so get over it.”

Just two years earlier, PETA launched a campaign equating animal slaughterhouses to the Holocaust.

Most recently, PETA’s ads have featured women in various states of undress as they extol the benefits of vegetarianism, achieving the bigotry trifecta.

Therein lies the issue that animal rights groups often forget – there is a moral and ethical difference between an animal and a human being. Most people recognize this; we wouldn’t hesitate between saving a drowning woman and a drowning cat, and that’s a good thing. To even suggest that the lives of black people or Jews are comparable to that of an animal makes a mockery of the oppression these groups claim to be fighting.

This is not to say that animal abuses must be excused or dismissed. On the contrary, I would hope that people recognize the link between human and animal exploitation.

But when animal-rights groups endorse publicity stunts and use naked female bodies to make a point, they only help alienate people. For the sake of the cause, please stop already.