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Chimpanzee "Personhood" Is Back In Court
sciencehabit writes Chimpanzees are back in court. Judges in New York State heard the first in a series of appeals attempting to grant "legal personhood" to the animals. The case is part of a larger effort by an animal rights group known as the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) to free a variety of creatures—from research chimps to aquarium dolphins—from captivity. If the case is successful, it could grant personhood to chimps throughout the state.
If chimps are people, will they be able to vote? Hold political office? Cue the jokes.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
You just pulled the rights from a a metric fuck ton of mentally & physically handicapped people
There are lots of humans you can't legally marry. They pretty much all have one thing in common: they can't legally give consent.
Also, you really shouldn't look at your sister that way.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
...this case should have been tossed. One can't file on behalf of another (unless they are a legal guardian or hold a power of attorney), and the plaintiffs also can't show any personal harm to themselves.
If they feel strongly enough about the issue, the remedy is political. Convince enough people that 2/3 of Congress and 3/4 of state legislatures will agree, and pass a Constitutional amendment.
There are plenty of people who appear before the courts who cannot argue their own cases. In fact, most Common Law jurisdictions have individuals called Public Trustees (or a similar office) who are charged with representing those who, because they are not deemed capable of representing themselves in court, still may need access to the judicial system. Surely granting basic liberties to other sentient creatures could be modeled on the same legal structures we put in place to protect children and the mentally incapacitated.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Oh, that's easy.
Said right-wing groups choke money spent on education standards, teach everyone "abstinence only!" when it's not realistic, etc., which results in people having babies because they had unprotected sex and didn't have the education for how to use contraception. Now that babies are born to people who are poor and didn't have the education to know how to reduce the risk of babies from the one act that could take the stress out of their life, they also can't get welfare, medicaid, etc. because "they aren't carrying their fair share," which forces their kids through poverty, shitty education, a lack of contraception knowledge, more babies, and more kids forced through poverty.
Honestly, if hard-right-wingers just said "Hey, we believe abortion is wrong, but use contraception to greatly reduce the risk of having a baby!", they might've actually had some support! But their current stance is "you can't use contraception, and you must take care of anybody you bring into this world on your own. We know you can't help but have sex because it's wired into your brain but screw you anyway."
Independent voter here. I usually vote for moderate Republicans, Independents, or moderate Democrats.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
1) Animals already have something resembling rights, in the form of animal cruelty laws; the question here is whether those rights should be expanded to include some of the things guaranteed to humans.
There is a spectrum of opinion on what "animal rights" means. At the very least, I think animal rights include the right not to suffer needlessly at the hand of humans. I doubt anyone would argue that is also a human right. So, continuing in that direction, I don't think it's a stretch to imagine that many human rights can be accorded to animals also.
Arguably, what we humans call animal rights are really just human-law restrictions on our own behavior (and good ones IMHO.) However, I think it captures their intent to call them "rights" so I embrace the term.
2) Plenty of humans (children, or, as someone else pointed out, the handicapped) can't hold down jobs or feed themselves. Chimps and dolphins, on the other hand, typically are able to feed themselves. So what you're saying is, chimps and dolphins should have more rights than children and the disabled?
I don't think it's a question of "more" rights, just different ones, and with the qualifier I mentioned above that we're really talking about human laws, not animal rights. I would say that animals have their own innate sense of rights and justice, and what we think of as their rights is an idealized picture of our relationship with them.
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth. -- Henry Beston
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I'm not asking for academic citations, intellectual anal palyp. I'm asking for you to explain yourself clearly.
Being lazy and vague gives no one any opportunity to know what you're talking about or judge whether in fact you're making any sense.
You could be a total and complete moron or a total and complete genius... and because you were vague and lazy no one could tell the difference.
So here I come into your comment asking you nicely "hey, please be clear"... to which you respond "this isn't an academic paper with parenthetical references, so I don't even need to be coherent!"...
Which is just stupid.
Last chance... be clear or I have to make some rather obvious assumptions. Your choice.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.