PETA: What are they doing "right"?

[GodsGadfly]

Twentyish years ago, PETA was considered a fringe group that spoiled people’s best clothes. A few months ago, a study said that more Americans think it’s immoral to wear fur than think it’s immoral to have an abortion or a divorce.

Then there’s the whole PETA/Mepkin Abbey thing.

Let’s not even get into everything the Gay Rights movement does.

The success of these groups is not just because they have so much influence in Hollywood, etc. They have the influence because they’re effective at influence-building.

Catholics always seem several steps behind the culture and to take advantage of new technologies: how long did it take us to embrace the printing press after giving the Protestants a huge lead?

Rather than raising the call to retreat in the Culture Wars, we need to redo our strategy. We need to look at what groups like PETA are doing that helps them win people’s hearts and minds, and we need to do that.

I’ll tell you one right now: you’re likely to see far more dedication among PETA members doing one of their protests (e.g., their well-organized and obviously effective campaign against Mempkin Abbey) than you are to see among Catholics regarding praying in front of Planned Parenthood. We can’t even get our local birthright to support our Planned Parenthood prayer vigils.

 

[Ruthie]

No, we don’t need to be like PeTA. Warning: rant ahead.

They lie, cheat, and steal. They have gained much influence that way.

Example: the whole fur thing. They would have you believe that fur animals are either caught in cruel, inhumane leg-hold traps, or raised under inhumane conditions. This is not true. I have no liking for leg-hold traps - but most furs come from fur farms. Anyone who works with animals can tell you that inhumane conditions do not make for thick, shiny fur. It is not cost-effective to raise mink or foxes inhumanely. Raising them humanely is expensive - so furs are too.

And anyone can tell you that animals bred and born in fur farms cannot survive in the wild - but that’s another issue.

But they publish gory images obtained from who knows where (including paying people to do these gory things), lie to people by telling them that this is the every day practice at fur farms, and raise billions of dollars through this lie.

They have published lies about how many animals die in shelters every year. They have also used numbers from the late '60s as if they were the current numbers - and things have changed significantly since then.

People think their donations go to help animals. PeTA runs no shelters, and their campaigns against owning animals have done nothing but damage to said animals.

They kept one of the “Silver Springs monkeys” for many years, using him as a fundraising tool. They kept him in a too-small cage, and refused to let any outside animal welfare agencies see him. They kept him alive long after a true animal lover would have put him down.

They would rather have an animal suffer death by starvation - an extremely painful death - than allow a human to interfere.

No. We do not need to imitate them.

Ruthie, a *real *animal lover

 

[Blade_and_Blood]

Personally, I believe these organizations prosper because other Christians are very strict to an intolerable point and Catholics are just plain old (as a religion).

Yeah, they are pretty biased, but the other side-- my side (the Catholics) aren’t saints either.

I’m completely against animal cruelty and all in favor of gay rights, but there is a fine line. These guys are just like us, though. Extreme! They’re mad and, apparently, so are we… I think we may have to show that side. Not now, but someday.

Ironically Yours, Blade and Blood

 

[GodsGadfly]

Ironically, this evening’s EWTN Live was about a group called Catholics Come Home_ which is doing exactly the kind of thing I was getting at: marketing the Church.

Ruthie, good points, all, but still, their strategies are effective at changing minds. PETA shows graphic images of "animal cruelty’ (whether real, fake or misinterpreted), and people say, “Oh, that’s horrible. We have to do something about it.”
Pro-lifers show images of aborted babies, and people say, “How horrible of you to show that.”

PETA can get tons of people to show up, round the clock, to lay siege to a monastery, but we can’t get more than a few people to stand on a street corner once a week and say the rosary.

The GLBTQ crowd can put banners on public streets proclaiming their “pride,” etc., but does anyone try putting up a banner saying, “Choose life”?

 

[aggiecatholic05]

PETA disgusts me. i read through their webpage and forum and thought i would be sick. they feel putting animals to sleep is worse than abortion, and noone can eat anything unless they get peta permission first. placing animals on par with humans is a bad idea.

that said they can market like nobodys business.

 

[Dirk_Skene]

I think they are kinda like the origonal KKK. The start was somewhat noble, but it has flamed & spun to crashed into something ugly & stupid. As a chef I have a lot of distaine for them as you can imagine

 

[aggiecatholic05]

I think they are kinda like the origonal KKK. The start was somewhat noble, but it has flamed & spun to crashed into something ugly & stupid. As a chef I have a lot of distaine for them as you can imagine

peta like the kkk, i love that. i think the best part is that its so true. as a hunter and fisher who eats what i get i too cant stand them, in case you couldnt already tell.

althogh id hardly call the early days of red paint throwing noble. unless you meant like days 1 and 2 of peta’s existence where they said ‘lets help animals’ but before day 3 where they said’screw people’

 

[twb1621]

No, we don’t need to be like PeTA. Warning: rant ahead.

They lie, cheat, and steal. They have gained much influence that way.

Example: the whole fur thing. They would have you believe that fur animals are either caught in cruel, inhumane leg-hold traps, or raised under inhumane conditions. This is not true. I have no liking for leg-hold traps - but most furs come from fur farms. Anyone who works with animals can tell you that inhumane conditions do not make for thick, shiny fur. It is not cost-effective to raise mink or foxes inhumanely. Raising them humanely is expensive - so furs are too.

And anyone can tell you that animals bred and born in fur farms cannot survive in the wild - but that’s another issue.

But they publish gory images obtained from who knows where (including paying people to do these gory things), lie to people by telling them that this is the every day practice at fur farms, and raise billions of dollars through this lie.

They have published lies about how many animals die in shelters every year. They have also used numbers from the late '60s as if they were the current numbers - and things have changed significantly since then.

People think their donations go to help animals. PeTA runs no shelters, and their campaigns against owning animals have done nothing but damage to said animals.

They kept one of the “Silver Springs monkeys” for many years, using him as a fundraising tool. They kept him in a too-small cage, and refused to let any outside animal welfare agencies see him. They kept him alive long after a true animal lover would have put him down.

They would rather have an animal suffer death by starvation - an extremely painful death - than allow a human to interfere.

No. We do not need to imitate them.

Ruthie, a *real *animal lover

Should this be taken as a your way of saying you don’t like PETA? I am not a member but I would like to know on what you base your accusations and how or where you came across this information.

 

[Dirk_Skene]

p… as a hunter and fisher who eats what i get …

althogh id hardly call the early days of red paint throwing noble…’

Man I’d love to have more time for that. I’m jelious.

Actually I should have worded it a tad better. What I ment was their intentions. Their actions, as you have pointed out, stunk from the get-go.

 

[twb1621]

I for one think we are missing the point here. It wasn’t about PETA but about the lack of involvement, support, commitment and loyalty we have to our Faith, to Jesus Christ and His teachings.

We do not need to be aggressive activists but we have even over the last 40 to 50 years gone so far from the practice of our faith it is at times shameful.

The time will come when we realize we can not pick and choose what parts of scripture we must live by based on convenience or anything else, but are called to “live” as Christ taught us and calls us to. Standing up for issues that might not seem the most comfortable like refusing to accept abortion rights or supporting homosexual life styles as legitimate. It is the Doctrine of our faith, not a political vote. Where once not all that long ago we had television programs airing during prime time on major networks, we today are less then taken seriously and it is our own life styles and liberal attitudes that lost much of our strength and respect. There is only one way to get it back, live by our faith again.

 

[xmydreamsfadex]

as a vegetarian, i think peta stinks. the lady who started peta did start out for a good reason but now she and her organization is washed up and rely on stupid “protests” and whatever else to stay afloat. seriously, the only people that might take them seriously are people under the age of 17 since they are going for your kids with their peta2 website.
i do owe a lot to peta because it was with their material i made the switch to being a vegetarian, at the age of 12 (see?), but i am not hardcore about it like them. making the switch for me was easy since i never liked meat anyway and could do without. i’m not one who thinks “i’m right” and that eating meat, owning a leather wallet, etc, is wrong per se because going vegetarian has a lot of good benifits, and i don’t consider it a moral issue. people like the peta goons give regular vegetarians a bad name. in my humble opinion anyway.

 

[Mike_Dye]

Well, I am messed up again. I almost sent a donation, I thought PETA stood for People Eating Tasty Animals. Good thing I checked it out

 

[Ruthie]

people like the peta goons give regular vegetarians a bad name.

That is ***so ***true!

For the real “dirt” on PeTA and the other animal rights goons, read AnimalScam, by Kathleen Marquardt. She footnotes everything, so you can research it for yourself.​

TWB is right, though. Maybe a better thread title would have been, “Why Can’t We Market Like PeTA?”

Of course, I’d still have given the same answer. We can’t, because lying is a sin.

God bless us all, including the animals,

Ruthie

 

[Newbie2]

People think their donations go to help animals. PeTA runs no shelters, .

No. We do not need to imitate them.

Ruthie, a *real *animal lover

Actually, PETA does run shelters, and that’s perhaps the only thing they’re doing right…oops, I almost forgot the two PETA shelter workers who were “dismissed” for throwing away dog corpes in the dumpster.

But to the OP’s point. Massing many people at rallys does not a worthy cause make. We can do more for our Catholic causes by frequent pray than they can do for theirs with thousands of ralliers and millions of dollars.

 

[GodsGadfly]

Thanks, TWB

My whole point was that, while I think PETA is repulsive and totally screwed up, they have effectively changed the minds of the American populace. I don’t know when PETA was founded, but I do know that the public’s attitude towards them has changed drastically through the course of my lifetime.

PETA proves that the mind of the public can be changed if you work hard at it, and yet we deny–when we have the Holy Spirit on our side–that we can effective evangelize the general public?

We had a special prayer vigil in front of Planned Parenthood the other night. It was an official diocesan event. It was well promoted. There were a number of people there–maybe two or three times the number that normally show up for the regular Saturday morning rosary.

Where was everyone else?

My family thinks I’m “extremist” and “asking for trouble” because I have bumper stickers on the back of my car. I’ve had numerous people come up to me and say things like, “I totally agree with you” or “I like your bumper stickers.” One time while I was parked at the mall, someone tore the stickers off the back of my car (strategically,l too, to change the meaning).

I was getting ready to trade that car in, anyway, so I was grateful they did half the work for me.

Yes, we should pray, but the Apostles didn’t just stay in the Upper Room and pray: they went out and evangelized the world.

We really need to start examining what makes effective movements work, and we need to start doing it.

And I don’t think it’s “just” copying the civil disobedience and boycotts of the Left–these things certainly work, but our opponents turn them around against us, anyway. It’s about looking at what makes their rhetoric so successful.

 

[Newbie2]

Actually, PETA does run shelters, and that’s perhaps the only thing they’re doing right…oops, I almost forgot the two PETA shelter workers who were “dismissed” for throwing away dog corpes in the dumpster.

But to the OP’s point. Massing many people at rallys does not a worthy cause make. We can do more for our Catholic causes by frequent pray than they can do for theirs with thousands of ralliers and millions of dollars.

Make that “corpses”.