Author: Brian Carnell

PETA vs. Environmentalists

Scripps Howard ran a story last week about an ongoing conflict between People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and three environmental groups that support plans by the Environmental Protection Agency to test tens of thousands of manmade chemicals for safety purposes.

PETA has a web site, www.greenmeanies.com, and has taken out newspaper ads attacking the Natural Resources Defense Council, the World Wildlife Fund and Environmental Defense for supporting the planned testing which will involve some animal tests.

PETA’s Jessica Sadler told Scripps Howard,

We’ve tried to discuss what we think are critical issues with these environmental groups and have had obstacles erected at every turn in our efforts to reduce the amount of animal suffering that these programs stand for. The fact is that EPA kills more animals in chemical toxicity tests than any other federal agency and they still have not banned a single toxic industrial chemical in more than a decade.

Both the EPA and the environmental groups point out that, contrary to PETA’s propaganda, there simply are not animal alternatives for all of the chemical toxicity tests involved. The Natural Resources Defense Council also disputes a claim that PETA and other animal rights activists have made that the EPA’s endocrine disruptor testing program will require killing 600,000 to 1.2 million animals. NRDC’s Gina Solomon told Scripps Howard,

I think those numbers are ridiculous. Most chemicals will be prescreened out and won’t even be tested in animals. Only a relatively small number of chemicals will test positive. Those will be ones that will require a large number of animal tests.

PETA lying about animal tests? Say it isn’t so!

Animal activists face green groups. Joan Lowry, Scripps Howard, July 18, 2002.

PETA's New, Friendlier Image? Dancing On Graves!

After the 9/11 terrorist attack, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals told reporters that it was altering its tactics because the “in-your-face” style of protests wouldn’t be as effective. And, amazingly, not a small number of newspapers bought that nonsense and ran stories about PETA’s new profile. And this weekend, PETA’s less offensive approach including sending a woman to literally dance on the grave of one of PETA’s enemies, the late circus trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams.

Gebel-Williams died a year ago and to mark the one year anniversary of his death, PETA sent Rachelle Thorne, 20, to his grave site dressed in a devil costume. Thorne planned to dance on the circus pioneer’s grave. (Thorne also gave her name as Jessica L. Smith to police).

Thorne was accompanied by PETA spokeswoman Brandi Valladolid who told reporters that Gebel-Williams was “a bully who made a fast buck on the bloodied backs of animals.”

Gebel-Williams’ families got wind of the planned protest and alerted police. They took Thorne into custody while Valladolid split before the arrest took place.

Thorne remained in jail overnight and Valladolid told The Florida Herald Tribune that it was the policy of PETA not to bail out its protesters when arrested. That, of course, is a lie, since PETA has on several occasions bailed out arrested protesters, including an incident a few years ago when it bailed out individuals accused of arson at a PETA protests.

Ringling Bros. issued a press release saying,

It’s shameful that our critics feel that they should desecrate the resting place of a man beloved by millions who ushered in the era of respect for all animals. According to a press release issued yesterday, PETA sent a protester dressed as a devil to dance on the rave of animal trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams, who passed away one year ago today.

While police managed to stop Thorne/Smith from dancing on Gebel-Williams grave, such outrageous protests do help to drive yet another nail in the coffin of the animal rights movement. For a brief second, PETA seemed to recognize this after the 9/11 attack but has apparently concluded that even horrible publicity like this is better than no publicity at all. Lets hope they keep up that policy.

Sources:

Protest at Gebel-Williams grave foiled. Sun and Weekly Herald (Florida), July 21, 2002.

Devil picks a hot day for grave dancing. Bill Hutchinson, Herald Tribune (Florida), July 20, 2002.

Ringling Bros. Responds to Extremists’ Latest Antics. Ringling Bros., Press Release, July 19, 2002.

Televised Exhumation in the Netherlands

When Dutch political candidate Pim Fortuyn was shot and killed by an animal rights activist, an official funeral was held in the Netherlands even though ultimately Fortuyn’s body would be interred in an Italian cemetary.

So they’re finally getting around to digging up his coffin to ship it to Italy, which isn’t that odd, but what is bizarre is that the exhumation is going to be televised live on Dutch national television.

The decision to broadcast the exhumation has apparently caused quite a bit of controversy. The Guardian had an amusing quote from Willem Breedveld, who it identifie as a “senior media commentator,

It will be the first time someone in the Netherlands has been dug up on TV. We normally don’t do it out of respect for the dead. But (his supporters) want to show a sort of resurrection of Pim Fortuyn just like the resurrection of the lord, and that’s blasphemy.

Fortuyn’s reburial in Italy will also be televised live. Weird.

Is It Constitutional to Make Fliers Identify Themselves?

EFF co-founder John Gilmore is filing a lawsuit attempting to overturn regulations requiring people to show their identification at airports. Gilmore says such requirements are unconstitutional.

It is difficult to imagine any scenario in which a court does not simply point to Sept. 11 and rule that requiring identification or air travelers is well within the government’s powers to ensure public health and safety.

In fact, I suspect the judge or judges who ruled in favor of Gilmore’s contention would likely face impeachment hearings in the Senate.

Finally, I don’t think Gilmore will find much support for his argument that allowing terrorist acts to occur might be economically efficient,

In 2000, scheduled air carriers carried almost 632 million passengers. (http://www.bts.gov/publications/airactstats2000/tables/AirportTable1.htm) If the same number of passengers fly in 2002, but instead of arriving at the airport 30 minutes before their flights, they arrive 2 hours before their flights, those passengers will have collectively spent more than 100,000 years sitting uselessly in airports or standing in line to be searched.

Contrast this to the lost lives of the people who died in the 9/11 attacks. If each of the approximately 3,300 people who died lost 35 years that they would have otherwise lived, then in total they lost about the same amount of time. Government-imposed searches waste as much life *every year* as the lifetimes that the attack wasted.

Inconveniencing hundreds of millions of innocents, trying to catch dozens, or save thousands, RAISES the costs to society, rather than lowering them. Another way to think about it is that if we did away with the increased “security” and went back to letting people catch planes on 30 minutes’ notice, we would gain back as much time every year as was taken from our citizens in the 9/11 attacks.

This is a foolish argument. It makes no sense at all to compare years spent waiting in line with years spent dead.

Such a cost benefit analysis makes sense if we’re comparing the same unit. For example, a regulation to require infants to have their own seat on an airplane might save the lives of a few infants who are belted in properly when an airplane crashes, but it might cause even more infants to die in automobile accidents when their parents decided not to fly because it’s too expensive to buy another seat for the infant. And it might be useful to compare the benefits of different regulations that impact waiting times at airports.

But it makes no sense at all to compare hours spent waiting to hours spent being dead. Almost everybody — except Gilmore apparently — would prefer to spend two hours waiting in line than spend two hours being dead.

Source:

Gilmore v. Ashcroft — FAA ID challenge FAQ.

Gilmore v. Ashcroft — FAA ID Challenge.

Does Michigan’s Sexual Harassment Law Violate the First Amendment?

Wayne State University Law School professor Kingsley Browne wrote an op-ed in the Detroit News earlier this month arguing that Michigan’s sexual harassment statute violates the First Amendment. He was specifically referring to Burns v. City of Detroit in which a woman won a $1 million judgment against the City of Detroit for the insulting and vulgar speech directed at her by co-workers. But, according to Browne, both the verdict and the statute are in violation of Constitutional protections of free speech.

A major problem with the Burns v. City of Detroit case, according to Browne, is that the jury heard testimony about both constitutionally protected speech and speech that was not constitutionally protected. But the jury was not informed that it could only decide on liability for speech that was not constitutionally protected.

Moreover, so far rulings on sexual harassment have engaged in obvious viewpoint discrimination. Browne writes,

Judicial scrutiny is at its highest when the government restricts speech based upon the viewpoint expressed, which is precisely what the harassment law does. Progressive statements about women are fine; Neanderthal statements are not. Statements praising women as a group raise no issue; statements critical of women do.

As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, which covers Michigan, has said, harassment law requires “that an employer take prompt action to prevent . . . bigots from expressing their opinions in a way that abuses or offends their co-workers.” This is classic viewpoint regulating, which is almost always impermissible.

But the truly bizarre nature of sexual harassment statutes comes in with the whole idea of a “hostile environment.” As Browne notes, the hostile environment theory makes it all but impossible for individuals to tell whether or not their speech will break the law. Browne writes,

The vagueness of the harassment statute is made worse by the “totality of the circumstances” standard. A hostile environment can be created by a collection of different speech by different speakers even though no single statement by itself would violate the law.

One cannot know, therefore, whether a hostile environment exists without knowing the entire array of speech that will be challenged. Speakers are supposed to be given an advance warning of what can be said and what cannot, but the hostile environment standard is always assessed after the fact.

So how to fix sexual harassment statutes? Simple, says Browne — require that plaintiffs prove intent. Browne notes that a Michigan anti-stalking law was upheld because rather than simply describing behaviors that qualified as stalking, it also required that plaintiffs show the defendant engaged in “willful” conduct to harass the alleged victim. Such a similar standard should also be incorporated into sexual harassment statutes.

Source:

Harassment law chills free speech. Kingsley Browne, The Detroit News, July 9, 2002.