Common ground in the spay/neuter war

I'd have posted this sooner, but apparently San Francisco exploded or something and all the power went out in the part of the City where all the Internets are, and Six Apart went down -- taking it with it Typepad, Vox, Word Press, and LiveJournal. Also taken were Craig's List and Technorati. It wasn't pretty, and in fact, it's still not pretty, because only around half those things are back, even though the power's been on for a while now. There would be widespread rioting in the streets, if everyone wasn't catatonic for lack of access to their blogs and stuff.

The power stayed on in my part of the City, but I wasn't able to get here to tell you that, as promised, I have something doggish (and, in this case, cattish). My column at SFGate this week:

Take two groups of people who mistrust and dislike each other. Take a law that one side wants and the other side hates, about an issue they don't even agree exists, or if it does, what defines it.

That describes the recent battle over AB 1634, which would have mandated the sterilization of all California dogs and cats over the age of 6 months with the goal of reducing the number of these animals euthanized in state shelters. But what might surprise you if you take a closer look at those two diametrically opposed groups of people is that both are motivated by the same thing: A tremendous love of animals.

So despite the gaping chasm between us, I can't help but wonder if we aren't missing a pretty amazing opportunity to huddle together on the little patch of ground we share. Because let's face it: Both sides of the mandatory spay/neuter war share the goal of reducing the deaths of dogs and cats in animal shelters. In other words, we want the same thing.

In a previous column, I outlined all the reasons I don't think the proposed law would reduce shelter deaths, and how I thought in some ways it might even make things worse. But I very much do want to see the number of dogs and cats who end up in shelters, or who are killed in shelters, to be reduced.

Because AB 1634 was withdrawn by its author at least until January, I'd like to ask everyone who cares about this issue to pretend for, oh, the 10 minutes it will take you to read this column that legislation is off the table, and you still have to solve the problem.

How about starting not with any particular action or strategy, but by trying to think about the issue in a different way? Forget all the rhetoric on both sides, and just keep the goal clear in your mind: Reducing the number of dogs and cats who die in California shelters.

Read the rest here, and remember: You can post comments on my my articles there now!

Comments

[John Vermes]

The article makes many good points. It may even in some unusual context be a framework for bringing together the silent majority of open-minded people on both sides.

That said, those of us who take pets into our own homes cannot allow ourselves to sit idly by while energetic activists pull whatever strings they can to take away precisely that lifestyle. In this bill, they are cynically exploiting the problem of shelter pets by manipulating its public presentation for their own ends.

Influential and extremely well-funded forces behind this movement explicitly maintain that the 10,000 year old hierarchical relationship between people and animals is unethical and should be eliminated. In fact, they advocate the (to them utopian) end-goal of eradicating all forms of animal domestication, including pet ownership.

While such people can certainly be said to love animals in the abstract, at the endpoint of their quest – unstated in most of their public discourse – they revoke a freedom that has persisted since the misty origins of human civilization: the freedom to take animals into our keep. In less esoteric terms, they plan to take away the option to engage in complex, emotionally fraught, and ultimately life-affirming relationships that enrich and sustain so many of us.

The string-pullers behind these new-breed spay/neuter laws are not animal lovers in the usual sense. They are their sworn enemies.

[emily]

I think that paints a very large group as being defined by a few people at its fringe--something done by both sides and quite the opposite of seeking common ground, even if only re: short term, specific goals. The dog in a shelter today doesn't really care what unrealistic goals people might have about the future of domesticated animals as we know them.