High Court OKs Animal Sacrifice

In response to “Justices Affirm Religion’s Right to Sacrifice Animals,” June 12:

From a strictly legal perspective, the Supreme Court probably had no choice. It had to overturn the Hialeah city ordinance and allow Santeria sect members to continue their ritual slaughter. The hapless victims, which include chickens, pigeons, doves, guinea pigs, ducks, goats, sheep and turtles, are killed--while still conscious--by having their throats slit. In what must be called a supremely pathetic irony, all this blood and mayhem is done in the name of a loving God to appease the “orishas, the way of the saints.”

In criticizing the Hialeah ordinance, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “Careful drafting ensured that although Santeria sacrifice is prohibited, killings that are no more necessary or humane in almost all other circumstances are unpunished.” Thus, to put it bluntly, ritual sacrifice in the name of religion must be permitted because animals are unnecessarily and inhumanely sacrificed in the name of fashion, food, science, entertainment, sport and for every other excuse which serves the purpose of human vanity. Nice trick when you can get away with it! And to sanctify it further, all this slaughter has the solemn weight of tradition because it’s been going on for centuries.

I cannot help but recall the words of a friend and rabbi who, commenting on the court decision stated, “It is less a matter of law or religion than a reflection of a society still in its moral infancy.”

MICHAEL A. GIANNELLI

Executive Director, The Ark Trust

Studio City

The barbarians who sit on the Supreme Court have legalized and sanctified the torture, mutilation and killing of animals in the name of religion. When the next boatload of religious zealots seeking “asylum” in the U.S. is filled with head hunters from the Amazon, will they also legalize cannibalism?

ROWENA STOUGHTON

Santa Monica

Be thankful that you are not an animal outside the Homo sapiens persuasion on this planet. We slaughter and eat them, adorn our bodies with their hides to appear chic, and hunt and kill them for recreation. We subject them to laboratory experimentation and, if a virus breaks out, we exterminate rather than cure them. And now our Supreme Court has affirmed our right to sacrifice them to the gods we worship.

All this as we pronounce that we are the civilized species.

BILL SHEPARD

La Puente

To paraphrase Gandhi: “Religion itself is an outrage when an outrage is done in its name.” Perhaps it might have served us better if the Supreme Court had first reviewed Gandhi’s cautionary words instead of retreating into a lot of legal gobbledygook; we might have been spared the outrage of its shocking decision in the Santeria case.

GERMAINE BAUR

Ojai