c. 2005 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Activists from the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals stood outside the U.S. Capitol handing out pamphlets in front of an exhibit they called “Animal Liberation.”

Like many PETA efforts, this one, in mid-August, employed jarring imagery some might find religiously offensive. A billboard depicted a gaunt Holocaust prisoner next to a picture of a laboratory monkey, noting that both were “experimented on.”

It’s a decade-old but, according to PETA, effective strategy. The 850,000-member organization based in Norfolk, Va., displays images and slogans connected to Judaism and Christianity, all in an effort to equate animal and human suffering.

A new pamphlet produced by an organization funded by the food and restaurant industry presents 19 examples, including:

_ An image of the Virgin Mary cradling a dead chicken with the text “Go Vegetarian. It’s an Immaculate Conception.”

_ A photo of emaciated Jewish Holocaust victims cramped in their sleeping quarters juxtaposed with a picture of chickens in coops at a modern factory farm, all under the headline “To Animals, All People Are Nazis.”

_ A picture of a pig’s head next to the slogan “He Died for Your Sins. Go Vegetarian.”

Religious groups have complained for years about these tactics, but PETA officials say they have no intention of changing their strategy.

“Nothing honors religious imagery more than to use it to make the world a more compassionate place,” said Bruce Friedrich, PETA’s director of vegan campaigns. “Of course it would be wonderful to be able to get a message across without upsetting anybody. But unfortunately, that’s not the society we live in.”

Referring to human mistreatment of animals as “speciesism,” Friedrich said religious imagery is meant to force people to empathize with the universality of suffering.

“Speciesism is equivalent to other forms of bigotry,” Friedrich said, citing slavery and the Holocaust. “Other animals are made of flesh and blood and bone, and they have the same five senses and the same emotions.”

Bill Donahue _ president of the Catholic League, a New York organization combating anti-Catholic bigotry _ said PETA’s use of religious imagery reflects the group’s lack of originality.

“This is an organization that is intellectually bankrupt,” Donahue said. “They have no new ideas, which is why they rip off religious imagery to sell their message.”

Donahue said PETA’s use of Catholic imagery was “offensive,” and called the comparison of animals to Holocaust victims “a rather tortured logic.”

The Center for Consumer Freedom _ a Washington-based advocacy group supported by the restaurant, food and beverage industries _ agrees. It has produced a 43-page pamphlet titled “Holy Cows: How PETA Twists Religion to Push Animal `Rights.”’

“Our goal with this is to educate people,” David Martosko, director of research at the Center for Consumer Freedom, said of the glossy booklet. “Almost every (PETA) campaign has something to do with religion.”

In 2003, PETA, which was founded in 1980, launched an advertising campaign called “The Holocaust on Your Plate.” It featured the image comparing Holocaust victims with chickens.

The backlash from the Jewish community was fierce. Bernie Farber, executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, called it “the most offensive piece of crap I have ever seen in my life.”

Paul Spiegel, president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, called it “an anti-Semitic provocation.”

The controversy continued until May, when Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA, issued an apology. She said the organization was “deeply sorry” for any pain it caused, but that “the logic and methods employed in factory farming and slaughterhouses are analogous to those used in concentration camps.”

But PETA has returned to using imagery from the Holocaust, the Nazi destruction of millions of European Jews from 1933 to 1945. One entry in a PETA pamphlet handed out in Washington in August was titled “Eternal Treblinka.”

In it, artist Judy Chicago describes her visit to Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp, where she “suddenly thought of the `processing’ of other living creatures, to which most of us are accustomed and think little about.”

“I began to wonder about the ethical distinction between processing pigs and doing the same thing to people,” Chicago wrote.

Ken Jacobson, associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League,criticized the continued use of Holocaust imagery.

“We think it’s a debasement,” Jacobson said. While noting that the ADL considers PETA “a legitimate movement,” he said the continued use of Holocaust imagery is “offensive.”

Martosko, who called PETA “the enemies of consumer freedom,” said his group’s booklet will be distributed to churches, schools and community groups nationwide.

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In an effort to trace the roots of PETA’s focus on religion, the introduction to the “Holy Cows” booklet includes comments from Princeton philosophy professor Peter Singer, author of “Animal Liberation” and a revered figure in the animal rights movement.

“However sympathetically you interpret the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, it puts animals in a fundamentally different category from human beings,” Singer said in a 1987 interview with Animals’ Agenda magazine. “I think in the end we have, reluctantly, to recognize that the Judeo-Christian religious tradition is our foe.”

When asked about the August exhibit in Washington, Dawn Carr, director of special projects at PETA, indicated the religious approach, including comparisons to the Holocaust, will continue.

“We stand by that exhibit, just as we stand by the 2003 exhibit,” said Carr, referring to the “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign Jewish groups found so offensive. “The point is that we are all animals and we all have the capacity to suffer.”

MO/PH END RNS

Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for six photos illustrating PETA’s use of religious imagery.