HSUS’s Wayne Pacelle Endorses Human Exceptionalism

The "father" of the animal rights movement, Peter Singer, said "Christianity is our foe. If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian Religious tradition." Pacelle, it seems, is determined to use the Bible and Christianity as yet another platform for preaching the hypocritical animal rights agenda. Well done, as usual, commentary by Wesley J. Smith on the disingenuous evangelist Pacelle.

Thursday, September 1, 2011, 2:05 PM
Wesley J. Smith
Wayne Pacelle is the head of the Humane Society of the United States. He is very slick, sophisticated, and runs HSUS as if it is only about animal welfare. I don’t believe it for a second. HSUS works diligently to make meat raising more expensive and morally marginalized, without vocally pitching the animal rights dogma. It’s a tactic, not a true belief in the principle of animal welfare.

Toward that ultimate end, Pacelle has explicitly embraced human exceptionalism. From an article in Prism, an evangelical magazine, “A Call to Compassion From Our Brothers the Animals:”

Wayne Pacelle, CEO and president of the HSUS, explains why it encourages animal welfare instead of animal rights: “I think it’s a recognition that we are special and exceptional,” he says. “All these creatures are at our mercy…The rights language suggests that that there’s something inherent in them, and I think it’s more about us.”

Well, I can agree wholeheartedly with that. Human exceptionalism is why we have duties to animals. That is what I preach here every day and indeed is the core thesis of my book A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy. (Funny, I missed that rave review from Pacelle.) Indeed, that is the core animal welfare principle. We have a right to use animals instrumentally, so long as we balance the human benefit with the best and proper methods for attaining humane care.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t for a second believe Pacelle means what he said. He’s an old animal rights radical, a belief system predicated on the concept of “speciesism,” which explicitly holds that HE is unwarranted discrimination against animals. Moreover, while HSUS implicitly endorse humane meat, I perceive it as obfuscation. Read on .......