Finally, somebody really, really gets it!
Just because somebody believes in an ancient myth does not give them the right to torture animals in the name of that silly myth!
And now, Denmark has banned the religious exemption for Halal and Kosher slaughterers not to adhere to humane slaughtering practices.
Yes!
Yes!!!
YES!!!
From Time.com:
‘The ban, which requires slaughterhouse workers to stun animals before killing them, will now extend to religious communities that were previously afforded an exemption. “Animal rights come before religion,” Danish minister for agriculture and food Dan Jørgensen told Denmark’s TV2.’
Finally, one place where common sense and human compassion wins out over irrational beliefs!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
July 30, 2015 at 15:31
Xanthippa:
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand… It’s good to see something being done to promote the humane treatment of livestock.
It’s good to see that both Kosher and Halal methods of slaughter are addressed, because they are very similar.
And it’s particularly good to see Denmark finally beginning to resist the pressure exerted by its Muslim immigrants.
One the other hand…
If the law requires conformance to the practices of typical Western mechanized slaughterhouses, then the treatment of the animals will actually be less humane.
But the really big issue is that framing this in terms of the “rights” of animals has highly problematic implications.
Mankind is the dominant species on this planet. We own the planet, not vice versa.
Thus, kindness to animals is a matter of “noblesse oblige,” or something much like it, and not at all like the limitations on one man’s rights due to the equal rights of another.
If we don’t strictly maintain that distinction, then progressives will start to undermine the rights of man. They will do it because green is the new red, and they will do it by playing up the “rights” of animals, plants, and even rocks.
Oh, wait… they already are.
The reason one man’s rights can limit those of another is because the relationship is reciprocal: all men are equal before the law.
Thus the claim that animals, plants and rocks have rights devalues the whole concept of rights, and renders a man equal to an animal, a plant or a rock before the law.
This would destroy the logical foundations of the idea that a human being is the only thing in the world that cannot be owned.
We must not allow this to happen!
July 30, 2015 at 15:38
CodeSlinger,
agreed that while the language used is provocative and could, potentially, be problematic, this is very much a step in the right direction.
Not because it potentially degrades the rights of humans, but because it points our that religious beliefs are not good enough reason for one to be exempted from the rule of law.
It firmly puts secular law above religious law!
And THAT is really, really important.
July 30, 2015 at 17:43
Xanthippa:
There is nothing potential about it. The “rights” of animals, plants, and rocks are already being used throughout the West to trump the rights of human beings.
We must be extraordinarily vigilant when cultural Marxists offer us a short-term victory. They always do it in a way that backs us into a long-term corner.
And the apotheosis of the state – which is what always happens when we try to eradicate religion – is a very serious problem.
Why? Because it leads to excessive respect for the law, to the extent that secular law effectively takes on all the faults of religious law, with one more: it can’t even be named.
Is there such a thing as excessive respect for the law? Yes, of course there is. The rule of law is a good thing, but too much of a good thing is bad.
Thomas Jefferson writes:
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Consider for example the fraudulent Charter of Rights, which treats our rights as privileges while continuing to call them rights, thereby not only violating our rights, but with the same stroke depriving us of the legal language needed to express this despicable fact.
In the same way, secular law becomes indistinguishable from religious law for all practical purposes, and the language is changed to prevent this travesty from even being expressed, when we allow the state to promulgate the false belief that it, the state, is the highest possible authority.
You cannot eradicate religion. Every attempt to do so simply allows the state to assume the role of God.
This point is completely independent of the actual existence of God.
Treating the state as though it were God is never a good thing!
July 30, 2015 at 22:51
CodeSlinger,
methinks we have had this discussion a few hundred times and will have to continue to agree to disagree.
August 1, 2015 at 00:57
Xanthippa:
Okay, let me ask you this: if we did succeed in eradicating religion, how would we prevent the state from assuming the role of God?
August 1, 2015 at 23:21
CodeSlinger:
REASON.
Feeding the anarcho-capitallism movement as a control.
August 3, 2015 at 16:06
Xanthippa:
Well, none of that is working.
Remember, when I speak of the state, I mean the modern state – the globalist totalitarian plutocratic state – the incestuously intertwined nest of snakes, born of the unnatural union of big government and big business, that oppresses the people by violating their inalienable individual rights, and exploits them by privatizing the profits and socializing the losses of the entire economy.
Today, in addition to its traditional secular powers, the state controls all the things the church used to control – like education, charity, and even morality (by replacing right vs. wrong with legal vs. illegal).
Further, people now petition the state with application forms for all the same things for which they used to petition the Lord with prayer – like deliverance from disease, disaster, and even simple misfortune.
Ubiquitous surveillance (which includes forcing your neighbour, your ISP, your doctor, and your banker to spy on you) and the proliferation of police powers, make the modern state much closer to omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent than anything the world has ever seen. Therefore…
The state has already assumed the role of God.
Actually, it’s much worse than that, which brings us to the crucial point:
A God who is actually manifest in the world is the epitome of infinite evil.
This is precisely what Christians call Rex Mundi, the King of This World.
In other words… the Devil.
Forget the silly Sunday-school image of horns and cloven hooves.
The globalist totalitarian plutocratic state has all the properties religion ascribes to the Devil.
August 3, 2015 at 17:46
All right, CodeSlinger,
Let’s all become An-caps!