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April 27, 2006
Socialists Say Orangutans Are People Too
Spain's socialists want to give human rights to all apes. I am not sure if Franco had any apes shot, but that have been because no apes were available. The Spain Herald reports:
The Spanish Socialist Party will introduce a bill in the Congress of Deputies calling for 'the immediate inclusion of (simians) in the category of persons, and that they be given the moral and legal protection that currently are only enjoyed by human beings.' The PSOE's justification is that humans share 98.4% of our genes with chimpanzees, 97.7% with gorillas, and 96.4% with orangutans.
Does this mean a chimpanzee that killed a homo sapien would have to be brought before a judge before he could be imprisoned? What if one chimpanzee killed another chimpanzee? Could an orangutan argue that a cross species rape (they have happened before according to this book) was consensual and avoid imprisonment? What about other primates? Why aren't they protected?
I think it was a good thing when European countries no longer put animals like pigs and horses on trial and only put members of the species homo sapien on trial. This made firm legal distinctions between human beings and other animals, but Spanish socialists seem to want to reverse this trend.
Posted by Pete at April 27, 2006 06:54 PM
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Comments
Would this also apply to the human-animal hybrids that Bush talked about in his State of the Union?
Posted by: Jeff at April 29, 2006 12:08 AM