Welcome to the new social order

On June 25, 2008, the Socialist government of Spain passed a binding resolution giving legal rights to “great apes” (gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos). These rights include life, liberty and freedom from torture. Over the next months, the resolution will be particularized by specific laws, such as, making it illegal to keep apes in circuses or using them for TV commercials. Peter Singer, the philosopher of animal liberation, declared the vote to be of “world historical significance.” Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project (GAP), stated: “This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades!” (Apes, our evolutionary comrades?)

To many people this development in Spain will be seen bizarre, lending itself to comedic quips. (“This declaration gives new meaning to the expression ‘I’m a monkey’s uncle.’”) Yet the proponents of the new resolution and their supporters are deadly serious, and we should be aware of their agenda. Their influence spreads far beyond Spain.

Fifteen years ago, the movement to grant human rights to apes went forward with the founding of the international “Great Apes Project.”

Proponents began lobbying the United Nations for a declaration that would not only protect primates from exploitation but that would classify them as equal to humans, since they experience joy and pain, communicate with each other, use primitive tools and live in communities. This is the insidiousness of the movement — to reduce humans to the level of animals. Bioethicist Wesley Smith gets it right when he writes on his blog site: “Of course the purpose of this isn’t merely to improve the treatment of apes — which could be accomplished as it already has been in some places via normal animal welfare statues. Rather the explicit point of the GAP is revolutionary — to demote human beings … into merely another animal in the forest.”

To those who have followed Spanish news in recent years, the new law is hardly a surprise. As John Jalsevac points out, Prime Minister Luis Zapatero’s socialist government has taken Spain in just a few years “from being one of the most conservative countries in Europe to being one of the most ‘progressive.’” The government has marginalized the Catholic Church, opened the door to abortion, legalized homosexual marriage and “embraced nearly every anti-life, anti-family, anti-tradition and anti-religious trend currently making its way through the West.” How sad. Spain is the land of Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier and the heroic martyrs of the Spanish Civil War.

Last January Zapatero spoke to the citizens of one of Spain’s southern cities and declared that faith should be restricted to private life, that faith does not have any rights in the public square, that no morality can be imposed upon the law.

He insisted that “democracy must broaden individual rights as much as possible and recognize as much as possible the plurality society has.”

The extension of plurality is to elevate animal primates to human level and reduce humans to animal level. Chimpanzees now will be more protected in Spain than unborn children.

It is not that we haven’t an obligation to treat animals humanely. We do. The Catholic moral tradition has always taught that. But the reason is not because animals are equal to us but because they are creatures of God and cruelty to them reduces our dignity. To equate them with us is to deny our basic God-given nature, distinct and unique. We discard such a truth at great peril.

Father John A. Leies, SM, STD, is former president of St. Mary’s University and was formerly dean of the Theology Department.