Compartmentalizing compassion

John Sorenson responds to National Post article on misgivings around Windsor and Newmarket protests.

. . . it is completely untrue that “an animal receives more concern than a child” in Canadian society. Most obviously, we do not operate factory farms in which we raise children for slaughter. Nor do we skin them so that we can make them into clothing or use them in biomedical experiments. Many more resources and far more social advocacy groups are devoted to human problems than to the plight of animals. Even in the case of those animals we designate as pets, Canada’s existing animal cruelty laws are antiquated and inadequate and lag behind legislation that exists in many other countries.

Rather than compartmentalizing compassion and regarding activism as a zero-sum game, those who advocate on behalf of abused children and women should recognize that the abuse of animals is directly related to their own priorities.

Dogs vs. women, children

Protests in Windsor, Newmarket met with misgivings.

The sexual mutilation of Tyson, the Windsor dog, is indeed a sad story, said Lee Lakeman, spokeswoman for the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres in Vancouver. But where is that fomenting crowd when rapists and abusers of women appear in the same courthouse, she wondered.

“I would want that kind of unqualified support for women who are assaulted,” Ms. Lakeman said. Calling for “justice” for Tyson “dumbs down the word justice,” she said.