PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The dentist who killed Cecil and the physician who killed another “protected” and “beloved” lion in Africa are being wrongly demonized, says Responsible Policies for Animals (RPA) founder and Executive Director David Cantor.
Cantor applies “conscience laundering,” “denial,” “rationalization,” “scapegoating,” and “hypocrisy” to the demonizing of the hunters. It is one thing to enforce the law and another to pretend civilization is not based on animal abuse. “We are all complicit,” Cantor says.
“Our self-congratulatory animal lovers and protectors of ‘charismatic megafauna’ don’t seem to realize their affluence, comfort, convenience, and unnatural safety from natural danger are rooted in holocausts against predators over tens of thousands of years,” says Cantor.
That’s why RPA promotes equal rights of all animals based on a new paradigm, and not on fighting cruelty when most animal abuse is not done for the purpose of causing pain and suffering and thus is not cruel. And not based on veganism when animal abuse cannot be touched by shopping choices.
“Social status, not cruelty, is the motive of highly status-conscious professional people, who see nonhuman animals as potential trophies,” Cantor says. “I see them as persons entitled to the same protective rights that humans have under the Constitution. They need such rights under the boot of civilization to have a chance at a fulfilling life.”
Other motives for animal abuse, says Cantor, include profit, companionship, labor, protection of property including enslaved “livestock,” entertainment. Decrying all of that abuse as “cruelty” cannot possibly reduce animal abuse -- despite hundreds of millions of dollars and hours, and hundreds of millions of books, videos, factsheets, and brochures, there has never been a net reduction in animal abuse in thousands of years.
Cantor, who considers himself a leading scholar of animal abuse, has been a full-time animal advocate since 1989. He has published essays, articles and letters and participated in radio and television interviews. He founded RPA in 2002, “seeing a need for new strategies not based on this week’s cruelty case or exposé.”
Responsible Policies for Animals is a unique national educational nonprofit organization based in Glenside, Pennsylvania to promote justice and equal rights of all animals.
