Reply #34: PETA goes to far, in my opinion, when they argue that the honey

[Goldstein1984]

industry "enslaves" bees.

I just value their extreme positions as a necessary counterbalance to the extremes on the other side.

My views on SSCS, on the other hand, is that they are bravely fighting a guerrilla war to save highly intelligent animals that are no less deserving of life that we are. I have spent many hours on the bows of ships watching dolphins playing, and on birding cruises in the Gulf of Alaska when dolphins became our escorts, to see cetaceans as anything than our oceanic kin.

The support of SSCS by my wife and I makes us unpopular with my wife's Inuit relatives. Her grandfather was an Eskimo whaler out of Barrow, Alaska. She has relatives who still are, including a cousin who was the first female "captain" of a whaling boat. We both believe all whaling is wrong. All whaling is culturally based, so culture is not an argument for an inhumane and anachronistic practice.

Okay, I've gone far off topic, so I'll bring it home on PETA. I support them to the degree that they are willing to take on the status quo and be outrageous, and to the degree that their goals are the ethical treatment of animals. We probably disagree on where the ethical lines are drawn (e.g. enslavement of bees).