Welcome
to animals and ethics
Welcome to animals and ethics, the website of animal rights
activist and author Norm Phelps. It includes articles, book
reviews, a page describing my books, links to just a few of my
favorite websites, and animal poetry by my wife Patti Rogers. I
created this site to promote the following principles:
  • Animals, from the most complex to the very simple, are
    sentient beings whose suffering and death are as urgent to
    them as our suffering and death are to us. Therefore, we
    have a profound moral obligation to show the same level of
    compassion for their suffering and concern for their
    wellbeing that we show for our own.

  • Our relationship to animals is evil, based as it is on the
    massive and systematic imprisonment, enslavement, and
    murder of innocent sentient beings. This can be made right
    only by the complete, permanent, and universal liberation
    of animals from human oppression.

  • While morality requires us to be radical in our goals, it also
    demands that we be pragmatic in the means we pursue to
    achieve those goals. Practices that are as deeply ingrained
    in our society and in our individual psyches will not
    disappear simply because we keep chanting the mantra of
    liberation. History shows that radical social movements
    succeed when their advocates maintain the purity of their
    vision while moving toward it slowly, gradually, one step at
    a time.

I hope you enjoy animals and ethics and find it helpful in our
common struggle to liberate the most helpless and oppressed of
those who live at the mercy of our all too merciless society.

Norm Phelps