I NO longer purchase or accept animal-based products. This includes any clothing or products made from wool, leather, suede, or fur. The reason: it involves the oppressive exploitation and brutal torture of animals. While you may not see this in your department store, it is the reality. While you may not want to face that reality, although I hope you do, you must respect the fact that I do acknowledge this brutal truth. Whether or not you want to face the inconvenient truth and harsh realities of animal cruelty is up to you, but in my opinion, wearing products from fellow mammals shredded of their skin is immoral. Imagine yourself being forced to live in crowded unsanitary conditions until the day the profiteers come along to skin you alive with no painkillers. If you think sheep have it any better, think again. We’re not living in the age anymore where the farmer comes along and patiently shears the sheep. Nor are we in the age where we hunt animals in the wild and utilize every part as the Native Americans once did. We’re living in the age of the factory farm and shrinking wildlife habitat, and genocide of fellow mammals is taking place right now. There is nothing loving, nothing Christian, nothing Godly, nothing peaceful about fellow living creatures being used for our unnecessary luxuries. Each year over 50 million animals—including millions of dogs and cats—are killed for their fur worldwide. There isn’t a penny worth that kind of evil.
Why I don’t wear wool:
http://www.hsus.org/furfree/cruel_reality/the_cruel_reality_of_fur.html
http://www.downbound.com/Wool_s/271.htm
More explicitly why I don’t wear wool and other products:
See the video
Click to watch footage of how raccoon dogs are skinned alive for their fur in China.
http://www.savethesheep.com/
Take a stand against cruelty: Say NO to fur: https://community.hsus.org/campaign/furfreepledge_jay?qp_source=gabawj
For more info on fur:
http://www.infurmation.com/
Cruelty Free Shopping:
http://www.peta.org/living/alt2.asp
Being vegetarian is another aspect of non-cruelty living:
Famous Vegetarians
http://www.famousveggie.com/peoplenew.cfm
http://www.goveg.com/celebs_famous.asp
http://www.famousveggie.com/quotes.cfm
“I do not regard flesh-food as necessary for us at any stage and under any clime in which it is possible for human beings ordinarily to live. I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal world - if we are superior to it.”
-Mohandas Gandhi
“To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana.” -Buddha
“Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight. ...Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God's absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.” - Rev. Andrew Linzey http://www.jesusveg.com/qow11298.html
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy” -Jesus
“There is not an animal (that lives) on the earth, nor a being that flies on its wings, but (forms part of) communities like you. Nothing have We omitted from the Book, and they (all) shall be gathered to their Lord in the end.” -Qur'an, Sura 6:38
“There is no difference between the worry of a human mother and an animal mother for their offspring. A mother’s love does not derive from the intellect but from the emotions, in animals just as in humans.” -Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides)
“There were no Slaughterhouses in the Garden of Eden.” -Unknown
“When we kill animals to eat them they end up killing us because their flesh...was never intended for human beings, who are naturally herbivores.” -William C. Roberts, M.D
The Three Stages of Truth:
1. ridicule
2. violent opposition
3. acceptance
http://www.isawearthlings.com/7minutesmedium.html
