Vasu Murti's blog

Dennis & Elizabeth Kucinich

I'm sympathetic to the Kucinich campaign. America needs more vegan politicians! Having been born and raised in this country as a member of a religious minority, I believe in a secular society, but I'm not a secular humanist. I'm a practicing Hindu.

I'm a pro-life Democrat. I am pro-life but also believe in a complete separation of church and state. I gave $1,008 to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, while asking Rev. Barry Lynn (Executive Director) to keep the organization neutral on this divisive issue, rather than take a pro-choice stance.

I have no problem with atheism. Thomas Jefferson, the architect of American democracy, said, "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are only injurious to others, but it does no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no god. It neither picks my pockets nor breaks my legs." Under Jeffersonian democracy, monotheism, polytheism, agnosticism, atheism and even victimless crimes are all tolerated.

This conception of democracy appears to me to be closer to the Vedic conception of government, because under Vedic civilization there was tolerance of different philosophical schools of thought, different yoga systems, demigod worship, ancestor worship (“pitas,” or forefathers in Sanskrit), pantheism ("advaita vedanta"), and even atheists like Charvaka. The American Left is open to the idea of a tolerant multicultural, multireligious, multiracial and possibly even a multilingual society, whereas the right is not.

Jefferson stated that "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are only injurious to others." Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein in "The Notebook of Lazarus Long", also wrote that sin lies only in harming others—all other "sins" are concocted. In Vedic civilization, victimless crimes such as intoxication (rice wine was offered to goddess Kali) and even prostitution (Srimad Bhagavatam 1.11.19) were legal and regulated.

While I recognize the need for a free market economy, I also recognize the advantages of welfare-state capitalism over laissez-faire capitalism, and especially the need for government regulation of industry in areas such as occupational safety and environmental protection. I agree that religion has no place in the secular arena and therefore oppose government instituted prayer in the public schools, but must simultaneously oppose the teaching of modern myths such as the theory of evolution in the public schools as well.

According to Vedic civilization, people fall into four different classes: educators, military, mercantile, and laborers. Only a certain class of people will have military inclinations, and a military draft forces people from the working classes to take up arms against their will. The American Left generally recognizes the immorality of a military draft.

Writer and activist Jean Blackwood, in the July 1993 issue of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a "consistent-ethic" publication on the religious Left, notes:

"Many of the young people who make up the animal rights and environmental movement grew up with pro-abortion rhetoric in their ears. They can make the mental shift from banning CFCs, outlawing whaling, and abolishing clearcuts to 'a woman's right to choose' with such alacrity that one might suspect no self-contradiction was involved."

For many young people today, abortion is just another choice; just another form of birth control. Will they be more inclined to listen to a secular moral philosophy that doesn't dictate their sexual behavior or intrude upon their private life, or a set of unprovable religious beliefs that does?

There are non-traditional pro-life groups that make up "The Left Side of the March" on the March on Washington, every January 22nd, in D.C.: Vegans for Life, Democrats for Life, Feminists for Life, the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians (PLAGAL), etc. I'm not sure if Atheists for Life is included, but Rachel MacNair, a Quaker pacifist, vegan, psychology professor and past president of Feminists For Life, once pointed out that there are pro-life atheists who argue that since there is no afterlife, life is especially precious.

Rev.Prof. Andrew Linzey

(This argument is also used by Reverend Andrew Linzey in his 1987 book, Christianity and the Rights of Animals against Christians who claim animals don't have souls: if there is no afterlife for animals, and they are not to be compensated for the sufferings we inflict upon them now, then there is no justification for causing them pain.)

[img[My friend James Dawson, a practicing Theravadin Buddhist, used to publish Live and Let Live, a pro-life, animal rights, Libertarian 'zine. Someone once wrote in, and referred to Libertarians as "Republicans who do drugs." (Rachel MacNair broke up laughing when I told her this!) Shay Van Vliemen, President of Vegans for Life, wrote on an e-mail list for pro-life vegetarians and vegans in the late 1990s, that she doesn't expect to see a vegan president in her lifetime—she would just be glad to have a pro-life president who would work to overturn Roe v. Wade. And she insisted she is NOT a Republican, but a Libertarian.

Nat Hentoff

Respected pro-life columnist Nat Hentoff, of the Village Voice, is a self-described "liberal Jewish atheist". Not your stereotypical pro-lifer! When Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a physician who presided over some 60,000 abortions before changing sides on the issue, wrote Aborting America in 1979, he was an atheist. He has since become a Christian. One thing the pro-life movement desperately needs is religious diversity. It's already stereotyped as being Christian (born again, Catholic, fundamentalist, etc.). I mentioned this to James Dawson when he was about to write to Dr. Nathanson about information on contraception. It caused James to write to Doris Gordon of Libertarians for Life (who, like Hentoff, is also a Jewish atheist) for the information.

The pro-life movement is also going to have to become completely secular, as it attempts to convince the American public, the courts, the legislatures, universities, philosophers, ethicists, etc. that human zygotes and embryos should be regarded as legal persons. (Conversely, the animal rights movement is secular and nonsectarian, but will need the inspiration, blessings and support of organized religion to help end injustices towards animals.)

In England, where animal rights are more accepted (the Animals' Agenda once ran an article about how animal activists in the U.S. look to England as an example of where we might be twenty or thirty years from now), there are organizations such as PEACH (Peace, Ethics, Animals and Consistent Human rights) and LIFELINK which oppose abortion and support animal rights.

My friend Albert (a Catholic vegetarian and disabled-rights activist living in Michigan) and I once thought about forming a U.S. counterpart to PEACH, and were e-mailing the leaders of PEACH in England. They said they wanted to leave the Seamless Garment Network (a coalition of peace and justice organizations on the religious Left that takes a stand against war, abortion, poverty, the arms race, euthanasia, capital punishment and racism) because it was "too religious". Rose Evans, editor and publisher of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, laughed when I told her this. She said there are atheists within the SGN.

Nat Hentoff appears on an SGN video from the early '90s. In it, he says that he came to the realization that abortion is the taking of human life, rather than, say, killing a bird or an insect. While I respect him for opposing abortion (a courageous thing to do for those of us on the Left!), his argument (like that of the pro-life position) is essentially speciesist. We protect a human zygote for no other reason than it has human chromosomes.

At the end of the SGN video, someone says that after having abolished war, abortion, poverty, the arms race, euthanasia, capital punishment and racism, perhaps the next generation can move on to making everyone vegetarian. Animals must come first, or (at the very least) these campaigns must be simultaneous, because abortion, like war, is the karmic reaction for killing animals. Pro-lifers look in horror as an entire class of humans are systematically stripped of their rights, executed, and even used as tools for medical research, but this is what we humans have been doing to animals for millennia.

Pro-lifers speak of the "slippery slope", the belief that acceptance of abortion leads to a devaluation of life and paves the way towards acceptance of infanticide and euthanasia. I merely assert that the slippery slope (the term was coined by Malcolm Muggeridge, a pro-life vegetarian) begins with what we humans do to animals. Pythagoras warned that "Those who kill animals for food will be more prone than vegetarians to kill their fellow men."

Peter Singer

Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation is an atheist. Peter Singer is not liked, even by pro-life liberals (of which there are many), because he advocates infanticide and euthanasia. Bill Samuel, who was raised a Quaker, a lifelong vegetarian, and is currently President of the SGN, compared Peter Singer to Hitler. (There is a sad irony here, as Peter Singer lost three of his four grandparents in the Nazis' concentration camps.) Pro-life feminist Mary Krane Derr, who credits me and my writings with having caused her to become a vegetarian (we co-wrote a piece on Hindu perspectives on abortion in 1998), said Singer's Should the Baby Live? was "intellectualized racism" because he advocates euthanizing handicapped infants. I'll always respect Peter Singer as the author of Animal Liberation, but disagree with him vehemently on the issues of abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.

There are many pro-life liberals and non-traditional pro-lifers. Had Dennis Kucinich remained pro-life, I would have voted for him.