Animal Welfare Community Stands Up for LGBT Rights

June is LGBT Pride month in the United States, and animal organizations all around the U.S. are standing up for gay rights.

Best Friends Animal Society and Salt Lake County Pit Crew marched in Salt Lake City's Pride parade last weekend. The World Society for the Protection of Animals and the Animal Rescue League of Boston both took part in Saturday's Boston Pride parade and Mercy for Animals will march in NYC Pride parade at the end of the month. The NYC parade will also include a Pet Pride contest for the first time, featuring animals in pride themed costumes. PETA often shows up at gay pride parades nationwide, too.

Beyond pride month, there are many prominent animal advocates from the LGBT community: Dan Mathews, Senior Vice President of PETA; Eric Mills, founder of Action for Animals; Nathan Runkle, founder of Mercy For Animals; and vegan blogger Joshua Katcher of The Discerning Brute.

In an interview with Striking At The Roots, Andrew Zollman, founder of LGBT Compassion, a San Francisco gay animal rights group, explained why so many LGBT individuals are vocal animal advocates:

"I think we're compelled to help animals due to empathy we’ve developed from our own experiences of oppression and abuse, and we’ve also developed useful strengths and skills from learning to cope with and fight discrimination. Not being accepted by mainstream society has helped us to be independent and true to our own ethics, which, of course, helps when being a vegan and/or an animal activist."

There have been some conflicts between animal activism and the gay rights movement in the past. The International Gay Rodeo is an organization that promotes gay rights at the expense of animals through rodeo. Another instance of conflict between the communities occurred earlier this year in Australia when an animal rights float was denied a place in a gay pride parade for not being "queer enough," even though 13 members of the group identified as gay. And, there's been tension around the issue of animal testing and HIV/AIDS. Several years ago, six AIDS organizations formed an anti-PETA group — Patient Advocates Against PETA — to oppose the animal rights organization's high-profile campaigns against animal testing. Not everyone agreed with their position, and a number of HIV-positive patients opposed to animal testing made it clear that PAAP wasn't representing them.

Following the passage of California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, and Proposition 2, which enlarged the cages of farm animals, some gay marriage advocates accused voters of caring more about chickens than people. This falsely pitted the animal welfare movement and the gay rights movement against each other. Andrew Zollman spoke eloquently about this false conflict:

"Compassion is not finite. The animals did not steal the voters’ compassion from us, and the majority of the voters who voted yes on 2 also voted no on 8."

Indeed, caring about animals does not make you care less about other world issues. In fact, as Brandon Bosworth pointed out recently, caring about animals may make you more empathetic towards people. Still, animal advocates are often accused of ignoring larger problems. When I went to see Jonathan Safran Foer speak about his book Eating Animals, an audience member asked: "How can we care about animals when there are sweatshops?" Foer responded: "Caring about one issue doesn't mean you don't care about others. And in fact," he went on, "caring about something starts to make you care about other things as well, simply because it feels good to care."

The animal welfare community's involvement in LGBT rights (and vice versa) is perfect evidence that being ethically conscious about one issue will only lead to increased awareness about other issues as well.

Photo Credit: g-hat