Hello Brock

Could you please provide a link supporting the claim that there are currently "100 hundred million" kangaroos?

Thanks

The Boston Globe
Boston Globe
April 11, 2001
NO HEAVY PETTING
Author: CATHY YOUNG

THE LATEST ANIMAL RIGHTS CONTROVERSY IS NOT ABOUT ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION, FUR COATS, OR THE SLAUGHTER OF FARM ANIMALS IN EUROPE TO PREVENT THE SPREAD OF FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE. IT'S ABOUT THE MORALITY OF SEX BETWEEN PEOPLE AND ANIMALS.
Admittedly, bestiality is hardly a burning issue. But it's being discussed in editorials in the Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard and The New Republic, thanks to an essay by controversial philosopher Peter Singer in the online magazine Nerve, titled "Heavy Petting."
Singer, author of the 1979 book "Animal Liberation," argues that our revulsion at human-animal coupling is as irrational as the old prohibitions on homosexuality and that the persistence of this taboo attests to "our desire to differentiate ourselves . . . from animals.
Singer scoffs at the belief that humans have a unique spiritual nature or moral stature. To him, "we are animals," which means that interspecies sex "ceases to be an offense to our status and dignity as human beings" and is not wrong unless it involves violence to the animal.
Singer's essay has been roundly denounced. Interestingly, however, many of his critics suggest that what makes sexual activity with animals immoral is not that it degrades humans but that it exploits animals: Since animals cannot give meaningful consent to sex, bestiality is akin to paedophilia.
Such an argument, however persuasive, raises inevitable questions about other human uses of animals (isn't being butchered worse than being sexually abused?)
It also poses problems for animal rights advocates: If animals can have sex with each other but not with people, that means drawing a clear line between humanity and other species and denying the moral autonomy of animals.
Surprisingly few commentators have challenged Singer's dubious basic premise: that human beings have no special status or worth and that "species ism" is a prejudice not much different from racism. This premise is shared by the animal rights movement, even if Singer's endorsement of bestiality generally is not.

But the notion of moral equality between humans and animals is pernicious even if it's not extended to the bedroom.
As philosopher Tibor Machan argues in a 1991 essay on animal rights, human beings have rights because they are "moral agents," capable of distinguishing and choosing between right and wrong. There is, writes Machan, "no valid intellectual place for rights in the non-human world . . . in which moral responsibility is for all practical purposes absent."
Yes, some animals can exhibit caring behaviors, such as helping an injured fellow beast, that animal rights activists invoke as evidence of morality; but no one really expects animals to respect the rights of other living things.
I'd like to see Singer try to persuade wolves not to mistreat sheep. Gary Francione, an animal-rights legal theorist, does feed his dogs a vegan diet, free of all animal products; but it's rather ironic that a champion of animal rights would use his human power to coerce animals into something so unnatural.
Indeed, Machan points out, most animal rights advocates "never urge animals to behave morally" or propose that animals be held responsible for moral wrongs. This is evident in Singer's discussion of an incident in which a woman visiting an orangutan rehabilitation camp was forcibly grabbed by an aroused male ape, and the female primatologist who ran the camp told her not to worry since it wouldn't hurt her. (The animal lost interest before anything serious happened.)
Singer is impressed by the primatologist's lack of shock or horror at an orang-utan's sexual attraction to a human. Yet surely, if someone reacted so casually to an attempted rape by a human male, we would be appalled.
This is not to say that animal welfare shouldn't be included in our sphere of moral concern. Most people believe that we should refrain from inflicting unnecessary pain on sentient beings. But any argument for the benign treatment of animals must be based not so much on animal rights as on the human values of compassion and respect for life.
Blurring human-animal boundaries, ostensibly meant to elevate animals,

Singer, author of the 1979 book "Animal Liberation."

Haha. Hell I bet that book was a best seller!! The misguided, ignorant and arrogant comments on this thread and many others by 'nicky' and 'dickie' once again displays why humans should probably have selected breeding similar to what farmers use in their cattle herds and sheep flocks. The continual ramblings of similar arguments of these two is similar to Rudd and the Labour government. Say the same thing over and over again and enough uninformed, ignorant people will believe it. Definition of this is propaganda. These two self professed experts, 'nicky' and 'dickie' are like they have lupinosis or have eaten too much loco weed, running around in circles, frothing at the mouth and dribbling.

Every negative comment about PETA is treated by these two and some others as derogatory. Since you're both self proclaimed experts on everything from animal welfare, farming, rodeo, God and heaven knows what else, tell me one organisation in the world that hasn't or doesn't make mistakes.

The difference is with PETA is that while they condone animal rights, there true agenda is animal liberation. Two totally different concepts and they conflict with each other. 'Nicky' and 'dickie' should show some rare honesty and state whether they are animal liberationists or are only for animal rights.

'Cuphandles' comment: "How enjoyable is is to have a "kicking strap" reefed up around your guts and then if you don`t want to perform you get a few quick "touch-ups" from a Cattle prod!

'Cuphandles' comment shows her ignorance on cattle. The kicking strap or rope that is used on bulls and horses in rodeo is not put around the guts as she calls it but around the lower abdomen just in front of the back legs. It is not reefed up as she claims because if this is done on cattle or horses they immediately want to sit down or go down on their back legs. The best stock are the ones that kick the highest and therefore if the rope or strap was tight it would defeat that purpose. The rope or strap actually works as a form of tickler to get the animal to kick high.

Bulls and horses used on the Pro Rodeo circuit in the U.S. are supplied by contractors who own the stock. The days of stock being supplied straight from ranches for this purpose have long since gone. I rode in the U.S. and I have seen bulls that once the cowboy is bucked off, the bull will stop bucking and walk towards the gate to exit the arena. If the rope or straps made them buck why do they stop bucking? Some bulls will 'hunt' the cowboy, a lot won't. In my opinion, no different to the way some people react. Some bulls have an aggressive temperament and some don't, just like people.

As for giving the stock a hit with a cattle prod if they don't perform. (LOL) Where and when has someone gone into an arena and tried to hit a bull or horse with a cattle prod if they aren't performing. This is just an absurd, totally ridiculous statement with you trying to cloud an argument when you obviously no very little or anything about it.

As I have said on here before, get your facts right instead of coming to an argument with 5% fact and 95% bulldust!

Heavy Petting
Peter Singer
Nerve, 2001
________________________________________
Not so long ago, any form of sexuality not leading to the conception of children was seen as, wanton lust, or worse, a perversion. One by one, the taboos have fallen. The idea that it could be wrong to use contraception in order to separate sex from reproduction is now merely quaint. If some religions still teach that masturbation is "self-abuse," that just shows how out of touch they have become. Sodomy? That's all part of the joy of sex, recommended for couples seeking erotic variety. In many of the world's great cities, gays and lesbians can be open about their sexual preferences to an extent unimaginable a century ago. You can do it in the U.S. Armed Forces, as long as you don't talk about it. Oral sex? Some objected to Clinton' choice of place and partner, and others thought he should have been more honest about what he had done, but no one dared suggest that he was unfit to be President simply because he had taken part in a sexual activity that was, in many jurisdictions, a crime.
But not every taboo has crumbled. Heard anyone chatting at parties lately about how good it is having sex with their dog? Probably not. Sex with animals is still definitely taboo. If Dekkers, author of Dearest Pet, has got it right, this is not because of its rarity. Dekkers, a Dutch biologist and popular naturalist, has assembled a substantial body of evidence to show that humans have often thought of "love for animals" in ways that go beyond a pat and a hug, or a proper concern for the welfare of members of other species. His book has a wide range of illustrations, going back to a Swedish rock drawing from the Bronze Age of a man -ing a large quadruped of indeterminate species. a Greek vase from 520 BC showing a male figure having sex with a stag; a seventeenth-century Indian miniature of a deer mounting a woman; an eighteenth-century European engraving of an ecstatic nun coupling with a donkey,