Friday, December 23, 2005

Royal Character Assassination Averted

From today's Australian newspaper:

THE country's most prominent wildlife protection charity has backflipped on a plan to install Princess Mary as its patron because kangaroo meat was served at a Danish royal wedding function last year.

The Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC) was to ask the former Hobart girl to become its third patron, alongside philosopher Peter Singer and former Member of the NSW Upper House Richard Jones.
Just as well for Princess Mary.

Professor Peter Singer is an odd choice for patron of a wildlife protection charity considering his rather sick views on bestiality.

Having "established" that bestiality isn't rare, Singer [in his essay Heavy Petting - Nora] says that although the Judeo-Christian tradition maintains a gulf between men and animals, this may be just a Western construction. "We copulate, as they do," Singer insists. "They have penises and vaginas, as we do, and the fact that the vagina of a calf can be sexually satisfying to a man shows how similar these organs are." The vehemence with which people react to bestiality "suggests that there is another powerful force at work: our desire to differentiate ourselves, erotically and in every other way, from animals."
Even other animal rights organisations are worried (although probably not as much as the cows and chickens one would guess):

Heavy Petting will come back to haunt us and is a step backwards. Unchallenged, this essay will serve to further marginalize and, therefore, damage the animal rights movement. The consequences of it will push us back into the bubble-gum bottomed recess of prejudice that hell hole of ridicule that remains our greatest obstacle and enemy.
Singer is not the type of man you want around your infant child either.

Singer subscribes to the hedonistic philosophy of Utilitarianism which essentially says if you have a disability or you're old and can't contribute to improve the comfort of the majority, then it is no great loss if you're killed.

Alas in addition to being a sick bastard with an astounding capacity for moral equivalence, he is also a hypocrite:

Utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer says some humans — particularly fetuses, newborn babies, and elderly people suffering from dementia — should be killed if their deaths will reduce overall suffering. Never mind that Singer broke all of his own rules when his mother became ill with Alzheimer’s disease.
Perhaps The Australian would like to do some more thorough research on its contributors before it devotes extensive column centimetres on his views of fetal stem cell research.

Well done Mary, you unwittingly dodged a bullet you never even knew was coming.

-- Nora

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