You can’t make this stuff up. From the website of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals:
It’s a two-fer: Get your animal companion fixed, and get yourself fixed too! Human overpopulation is crowding out animal life on the planet, and dog and cat overpopulation is creating a euthanasia crisis that is a crying shame. Disappearing wilderness, vanishing water resources, and pollution is the price that future generations will pay for more human births, while losing their lives is the price that millions of homeless dogs and cats pay when guardians neglect to “fix” their companion animals.
Every year in the U.S., an estimated 6 to 8 million lost, abandoned, or unwanted dogs and cats enter animal shelters. The best way to combat the companion-animal overpopulation crisis is to have your cat or dog neutered. And with a global population of almost 7 billion humans, more of our species could use a (voluntary) snip too.
Now, one lucky man can be reproduction-free, free of charge, just like his pooch or feline friend. During National Infertility Awareness Week (April 24 to 30), PETA will give one free vasectomy to a man who has recently had his companion cat or dog neutered.
Like many people, I was baffled by the unfathomably ironic and inappropriate connection of this event with Infertility Awareness Week. I know that PETA isn’t exactly known for its subtle diplomacy, but surely even they didn’t mean to do something so hurtful. After reading the rest of the post and more of the content on their site, my theory is this: They are so deep in their human self-hatred that they honestly didn’t realize that Infertility Awareness Week is not about acknowledging infertility as a good thing.
The post and the whole premise of the giveaway is a sort of self-loathing fest. The requirement for entry into the contest is to fill out a form, then leave a public comment answering the question: “Why should PETA neuter you?” From the website:
One eligible winner will be selected, based on his level of creativity and persuasiveness in arguing why he deserves to win and how his sterilization will most benefit both humans and animals. The winner agrees to have his name, city, state, and likeness appear on any PETA materials and websites and those of its affiliates. [Emphasis mine]
Now, I know plenty of folks who have chosen to get sterilized. Obviously as a Catholic I don’t think that’s a good thing, but I see how reasonable people can sometimes feel like it’s something they must do. But this? To publicly stand up and say, “ME! ME! I’m the one who most needs to be kept from reproducing!” can’t be good for anyone’s self esteem.
The odd position that the contest puts its entrants in, the organizers’ honest misunderstanding about the offensiveness of associating the event with IAW, the pain that it caused PETA supporters who dearly wanted biological children and weren’t able to conceive—taken all together, it shines a spotlight on a specific aspect of the anti-human-reproduction mentality. Words like “overpopulation” or “reproductive control” are safely impersonal. But when you get down to it, we’re talking about individual moms and dads and sons and daughters. It’s easy to make sweeping statements that “people” should have fewer offspring; it rolls right off the tongue to bemoan population growth caused by “too many kids.” But it gets awkward when you zoom in and start putting faces and names to this ideology. When we start saying that the world would be a better place if John Smith didn’t have another son or daughter riding the tricycle around the front yard, or when we look a sixth child in the eye and say “it would have been better if you weren’t born,” or when we take the heartbreak of infertility and celebrate it as something positive…it starts to get a little uncomfortable.
And so if there’s any upside to this situation, I think it’s that it’s a loud, public illustration of the truth that whenever you say that new human life is a bad thing, it’s always personal.
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Darn, I should have waited for the vasectomy, my dog and I could have shared a couple of bags of frozen peas.
Infertility is Gods will. If you can’t use methods to prevent conception, you can’t use methods to improve it either.
“If you can’t use methods to prevent conception, you can’t use methods to improve it either.”
What’s your basis for that argument? Cutting off your fertility (pun intended) is a violation of nature. It says no to God’s plan. Improving fertility, through NFP or otherwise moral means, supports nature, if it is helping the body to do its job.
I’m continually astonished at PETA’s chronic tone-deafness: ads juxtaposing animals with Holocaust photos and pictures of black slaves; the “Got beer?” anti-milk campaign; etc. This one really takes the cake, though. Evil, anti-human AND tone-deaf. Hey—Evil, Tone-deaf Anti-humanists ... all I need is a P now…
Steven, how about Promoting Evil, Tone-deaf Anti-humanists?
John, change the last word to Anti-humanism and we could have a winner!
Oh, and Rover: Sterility = dysfunction. Fertility = health. Medicine rightly promotes health and alleviates dysfunction. Not the other way around.
@ Rover. Wow. I don’t comment, but you made me get off my butt on this one. “Infertility is God’s Will” That’s a huge assumption on the Lord’s part and on the wounded soul suffering from that large burden.
Of course there are illicit means (artifical insemination, surrogacy)that go against natural and moral law overcome infertility, but you seem to lump even natural means (using NFP, nutrition, etc) in there as well.
Using your line of thinking, depression, high cholesterol, ADD, and even a broken are are “God’s Will.” If you had dangerously high blood pressure, would you eschew medicine or natural lifestyle changes and go on your merry way saying,“Well, it’s just God’s will.”?!
I am grateful that God has given us the brains to see the beauty and rhythm of our reproductive capacities. How amazing! On a personal note, I had a friend who prevented a miscarriage because she was charting and noticed warning signs in her body (cervical mucus, temperature). Her pro-life NFP only OBGYN agreed with her charts and gave her progesterone supplements. THat little bundle of joy and energy is now 3! We can use these capacities for good!
@Emily: By the same token, we need not accept spinal cord injury as “God’s will” and refuse to fund research to cure it just because some organizations (*cough*christopherreevefoundation*cough*) promote immoral means for such research (i.e. embryonic stem-cells). I would like to call everyone’s attention to one foundation seeking a cure for paralysis that does NOT support the use of embryonic stem-cells: the Mike Utley Foundation, co-founded by and named for a former Detroit Lions player who became a quadriplegic after an on-field accident. http://www.mikeutley.org
YOI!
Steven, how about Prideful, Evil, Tone-deaf Anti-humanists? Or Perpetual Evil, Tone-deaf Anti-humanists?
Rover - treatments for infertility are restoring health to a bodily system that is not working as intended (of course, treatments that circumvent infertility via immoral means, such as IVF, are not acceptable). It is restoring order to disorder.
Using contraception, on the other hand, is deliberately altering or mutilating a bodily system that is working as intended (i.e., with nature). It is creating disorder where there should be order.
Should we really be surprised since they think cockroaches and mosquitoes deserve the same rights as humans? The only good thing about what they and their ilk promote is that they will sterilize and contracept themselves out of existence. I know that’s not very charitable of me. Let’s pray that people will see through their nonsense and realize truly how ridiculous their organization is.
Well, least it wasn’t BoGo! LOL! It could be funny if it weren’t so Frustrating ! tho’ you do have to smirk at the Childish stupidity of the campaign.. I often ask myself, if I were for Choice… would I be glad that I didn’t get chosen? I once asked a feminist friend who was berating another friend of mine over his 6 kids.. Which of your very successful 3 children would you have not chosen to have? Of course, she was duly offended.. and said so! I said to her, that my friend was even more offended as she had ooed and ahhed over the kids pictures!
I loved theTiger Woods thing!
Let us begin with a reflection on Biblical Revelation of The Standard of truth . The gospel of John 5:46-47 revealed ” for had ye believed me: for he wrote of me But if ye believe not his writings , how shall ye believe my words? The biblical commentary for this scriptural passage from ( A new catholic commentary on Holy Scripture) ” Jesus is universal judge but will not accuse them before the Father; their accuser will be Moses ( Deuteronomy 31:26) who they pretend would commend their loyalty in the judgment if they refused belief in Christ ( cross reference 9:28) Disbelief in Christ’s words means disbelief in Moses’s writings, for it was of Christ ,center and end of scripture. We must recall ,God had revealed himself to man, making known to him his attributes and his sovereign will ( a new catholic commentary on Holy Scripture page # 172)
Barrenness is an affliction to many couples : Biblical Theology revealed in the ( book of Judge 13:2) And there was a certain man of Zorah ,of the family of the Danites ,whose name was Manoah ;and his wife was barren ; and bare not.
The correct scripture interpretation/ inspiration ( the Navarre bible commentary for Judges 13:2-25) ” Samson’s vocation was decided by God from even before he was conceived. This account has a structure similar to that of the calling of Gideon ( 6:11-23) . God sends his angel to a woman who is barren and tells her she will be consecrated to God as a nazi rite (cross reference book of Numbers 6:1-21) and he will perform a specific mission- to save his people from the philistine. In this account ,vocation,dedication to God and mission are all closely linked.The main features of vocation are outlined here. The initiative cones from God who sees his people’s predicament and prepares , from birth onwards,a man who will save them from their enemies. In due course he announces his plans through a messenger: an angel presents himself to the wife of Manoah (vs) she sees him as a “man of Hod” ( vs6) and he tells her about God’s plans. The couple’s readiness to go along with God’s will is plain to see ( vv8 and 12) As happens in some supernatural communications , in special circumstances the Lord offers some remarkable sign to demonstrate that the message indeed cones from him and that what he says will happen ( cross reference 6:21;Luke 1:20,36) Some of God’s ways of acting to be seen in Gideon’s vocation 6:11-24) are also found in the annunciation to Mary ( cross reference Luke 1:26-38) The way Manoah and his wife make themselves available for God’s plans to work,as also Mary’s great refinement and generosity in doing the divine will,are messages to the reader of God’s word in scripture - to check his or her own readiness to go along with God’s plans.
Peace to all during this Lenten Season
I have to share this story.
Once my mother had to get birth control pills. It was for a male neutered feline cat who had a skin condition.
@Steven et al.: I would have gone with Pathetic. Or—Ooh, ooh, I know! Perfidious! (Thank you, thesaurus.com!) I’ve seen some examples of really tortured not-logic that Peta has used to defend their stances, e.g. humans aren’t really predators because we don’t have our appetites whetted when we drive by roadkill. Honestly, I don’t know if they really stand for anything; this kinda stuff seems more like a “Darnit, we’re still relevant!” ploy.
Wow! This is a disturbing thing PETA has done….I have supported them in the past, but I have been turned off by their racey women and men “go naked” campaign. This vacestomy thing is a bit tasteless. I love animals and do like that they make the public aware of many violent things that are done to animals in the food and entertainment industry…But to support vecestomies in humans? This is not good at all..I think we should write them via email in the contact area of their website about how we feel about this…
CALL THEM CARNALISTS.
CALL THEM MURDERERS FOR PROMOTING ABORTION.
CALL THEM EXPLOITERS OF WOMEN.
People Eating Tasty Animals: Psychopathic Evil Thugs for Animals since 1980
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