His name is Matthew, he is 26 years old, and his supporters hope to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights.
But he won’t be able to give evidence on his own behalf – since he is a chimpanzee. Animal rights activists led by British teacher Paula Stibbe are fighting to have Matthew legally declared a ‘person’ so she can be appointed as his guardian if the bankrupt animal sanctuary where he lives in Vienna is forced to close.
And Europe wonders why the US won’t give up any of its jurisprudential autonomy to foreign courts…
Oh help.
I would vote to give him human rights if the Court would agree to assign chimp rights to Paula.
Obviously Paula has too much money for her own good. Seems to me she needs a court appointed caretaker…..
It’s about time. Then we need to dialogue about abortion rights and ordination for female chimps, as well as begin the push for inclusion of LGBT chimps.
#5 LOL!!
Matthew asks: ‘Am I my keeper’s brother?’
Next up is human rights for rocks and pond scum.
Perhaps we need to teach Matthew American sign language so he can speak for himself.
Why can’t Eugene Cussons from Animal Planet take him to Chimp Eden?
Just wait until Matthew gets his lawyer’s bill for all of this. He’ll have to get a job and start paying taxes and all that goes with it.
#8 : Too late.
Matthew for PB!
Laugh all you want. This is serious stuff now. WOuold I be surprised if the chimp is granted equal rights with humans. Not at all.
Once standards disappear, the definitions disappear. Once standards disappear, language becomes unable to make distinctions. This is no joke, alas, for soon hybrid genes will make the distinction between human and non-human almost meaningless, and the absurdity posted here will not seem so bizarre as the new reality. Larry
Larry,
Interesting that you should mention hybrid human/animal life-forms. Though that is a dark & dangerous road science is traveling, I’m concerned about the spiritual aspects. I just saw the new Narnia film, Prince Caspian, after re-reading the book. In the book, I noticed a bit of conversation that I had overlooked before. The children & Trumpkin had just survived a bear attack. Susan had hesitated to kill the bear because she thought it might be a talking bear. While the boys & Trumpkin are skinning the bear, Lucy tells Susan, “Wouldn’t it be dreadful if someday in our own world, at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here, and still looked like men, so that you’d never know which was which?”
George McDonald used a similar device in his Curdie stories. Curdie could hold someone’s hand and tell if they were becoming more animal or more man.
Once again, the world catches up with SciFi:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Was_a_Man
I remember reading this in my teens!
Won’t be the first time someone has made a monkey of a court.
“European Court to hear Chimp’s Plea for Human Rights”
Hold it! This chimp has made no plea. What business have we denigrating Matthew and chiphood himself by imposing our anthropocentric value judgments?
PS: Matthew would be delighted to settle for a box of figs.
One crucial problem,Watch, is that the Anglican church is paying no attention to the spiritual aspects of this coming revolution. But you are spot on. When there are animal genes in human genes, what then is the state of the soul? Is such a one (even if animal genes make him safe from forty diseases) a human at all. And how can this eht ical disaster be relate d to scripture? How can the gospels help us out of this quagmire? Why WHY does the church not pay attention? Schori will go away. This absolutely will only get worse. Larry
Sorry. Meant to write Watcher on the Wall. Larry