Progressive group claims chimpanzees are like African Americans in bizarre lawsuit

[Geee]

Daily Caller:

Chimpanzees should be freed from zoos for the same reason that African Americans were freed from slavery, a group of progressive legal entrepreneurs working to level the courtroom rights of humans and animals claimed in a recent lawsuit.

 

The offensive comparison is a dangerous and self-serving effort by progressives to win legal rights for animals via courtroom decisions, said a fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Wash., Wesley J. Smith, an author and a critic of the claim that legal rights should be shared with animals.

 

The claim also makes a mockery of slavery’s real impact on people, Smith said.

 

“Can you image what Nat Turner would said if the treatment he got was treated as equivalent to the treatment of a chimpanzee?” he asked.

The comparison “is completely outrageous,” he added.

“We’re not saying blacks and chimpanzees are alike, except in their legal status,” said Steven Wise, the president of the Nonhuman Rights Project, which filed three cases in New York seeking the forced release of animals, including “Tommy,” a chimpanzee.