Human morals and animals

I have had trouble defending my abstract argument from an earlier blog that expanding non-human rights diminishes our human moral system. For most people to understand complex logic it is usually necessary to have some good examples.

* A mother walks into a doctors office with her young daughter.  There is already a woman in the office with a dog on her lap.  The new woman explains that her daughter is allergic to dogs.  The other woman says she was there first.  Stand-off.  We have given the possession of a dog greater rights than the health or well being of a child.  Neither the doctor nor a policeman would be certain about resolving this confrontation.  Our moral system has already been degraded.

* Three deciding members of the Utah State Legislature Budget committee face one fiscal 2010-budget line item of $2 million for herding and sheltering 50 wild horses on public land during the winter.  There is another $2 million line item for the continued operation of a maternity ward at a poverty clinic for Latino women in West Jordan, Utah.  Just having those two line items to choose from has degraded our moral system.

* A shopper at a Whole Foods grocery sees a dog quickly stand-up snatch a slice of cooked pork roast from the warming table and eat it.  The shopper complains to the security person who approaches the owner of the dog (neither the security person nor the dog owner saw the dog eat the slice of pork) and tries to suggest the dog owner take the dog outside.  The dog owner says 'no' she has papers to prove the dog is a 'service dog'.  How can this be resolved.  It is already a degradation of our moral and legal system since there are California laws on the books favoring both the complaining shopper and the owner of the service dog.

* At the present time, in most of America, a person bitten by a dog has to endure the pain of the bite, the distress of a dog attack, the pain of rabies shots, the cost of rabies shots... and the owner of the offending dog may pay no penalty or a small $35 penalty.

Allowing non-humans into our human moral system degrades our human moral system.