The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

Monkeying around with human rights

Animal "rights" kooks in Austria are trying to get a chimpanzee declared a person...

In a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting basic rights to apes, animal rights advocates are seeking to get the 26-year-old male chimpanzee legally declared a "person."

Hiasl's supporters argue he needs that status to become a legal entity that can receive donations and get a guardian to look out for his interests.

"Our main argument is that Hiasl is a person and has basic legal rights," said Eberhart Theuer, a lawyer leading the challenge on behalf of the Association Against Animal Factories, a Vienna animal rights group.

The arguments are all very innocent sounding, arguing that by making him a person he can receive property and that would make it easier to provide for his care. But the name of the organization, Association Against Animal Factories, belies the innocence of their request. These radical people want to remove all distinctions between humans and animals, and no doubt eliminate all use of animals for food and medical research. So much for the unique status of humans, made in the image of God and given dominion over the earth.

Something else interesting. The care of this chimp is $6,800 a month or almost $82,000 per year. That would certainly provide more than adequate food and shelter for a couple of families of people, that instead is being spent on the care of a chimp. But to these "compassionate" people, money spent on feeding a chimp pastries and providing him with a TV is a perfectly rational use of $82,000 a year.

I assume that even in Europe this will go nowhere, but it is a sign of things to come, as radicalized fringe groups go mainstream. This is the proverbial camel's nose under the tent, and as soon as they can get one chimp declared a person, they will seek the same rights for every animal. It is no different here with seeking to chip away at hunting and trapping rights by emotional, uneducated appeals to suburbanites who think that steaks magically appear in the grocery store. It also serves as a warning to the U.S. to not get too entangled with European legal precedent that could some day be used to overturn U.S. laws because of crazy legal rulings in Europe.

This is the impact of abandoning God's Word. When you cast out the literal six days of creation in favor of an evolutionary framework, it only makes sense to grant animals rights. After all, humans are just an evolutionary by-product and not unique at all. Why shouldn't they have fundamentally equal rights with animals?