PETA Is Not the Enemy.

[athena]

132. OK.

First of all, I really appreciate your tone. I don't find your posts offensive or hurtful at all. This is a discussion board, after all, and any topic worth discussing will draw disagreeing voices. (If we didn't believe in dissent, we wouldn't be liberals.)

My goal in this thread was not to defend PETA. There was an anti-PETA thread out there, which attacked PETA with harsh language, without mentioning anything about the more important issue of factory farming. A separate thread tried to address this but was hidden for technical reasons. Since my thread was in response to the anti-PETA thread, I started it by pointing out that PETA is not the real enemy. Indeed, I'm sure that even people who don't like PETA's tactics would agree that, in the grand scheme, PETA is not worse than the factory farm industry.

Currently, I support the Humane Society. The reason I chose to support them rather than PETA was that I believe, like you, that a gentler tone is more effective. However, I am intrigued by PETA's claim that they grew their membership through shocking ads. I will look into this over the weekend, keeping in mind your points as well as others that were made. Thanks for the discussion!