I think less is more when it comes to explaining why it's wrong to use animals for food. Animals taste good, but that's too trivial a reason for imposing serious harm on them--suffering and death. (As I'm sure you know, in intensive farming laying hens suffer in many ways, and for each layer, a male chick is killed right off the bat. The layers wind up being killed when they stop producing eggs efficiently.) It really doesn't take any fancy talk about rights to see the problem--it's essentially a matter of balance. Great harms can only be justified by great goods--and the pleasure of egg-eating is not a great good. If you were to make this argument, you might encounter a dismissive attitude that says animals don't count at all, so there's no need for balancing harms and goods. But that attitude is pretty superficial--people tend to give it up when you talk to them about their cats and dogs. No doubt they would taste good too. You might also encounter the thought that it must at least matter ...

I think you would really enjoy a new anthology from Wiley-Blackwell-- Hunting . It is written largely by and for hunters, and looks at the sort of ethical questions you raise in a way you will find hospitable. I think hunting is extremely difficult to justify. Though once necessary to obtain necessary nutrients, clothing, etc., killing animals to obtain these things is no longer necessary. It doesn't really help justify hunting/fishing to eat what you kill, if you could have eaten something else. Even assuming it was necessary to eat meat, it would still be problematic to engage in killing as a recreational leisure activity--which is what hunting/fishing are for most people. If the main goal of sport hunting/fishing are having fun, and food is just a byproduct, something odd is going on (as I argue here ). But now getting to you question... Hunters who are concerned about fairness at least see animals as "subjects" instead of merely as "objects." That's all to the good. Fair...

Really good question. I think you ought and can stand up for animals in a variety of ways (by not eating them, not wearing them, not mistreating them, etc), but your effort is unlikely to ever be the one you would have made on behalf of the persecuted in Nazi Germany. That's OK, I think, for two reasons. (1) PETA had a campaign in the 1990s that invited comparison of factory farms and Nazi death camps. It's a bad analogy, I think, and so does "the father of the animal rights movement," Peter Singer. (I discuss this issue in my recent book Animalkind , if you'll pardon the book plug.) (2) Living in Nazi Germany, you could have completely separated yourself from Nazi persecution of Jews and taken a firm and effective stand against it. You cannot do exactly the same thing, where animal mistreatment is concerned. The low status of animals is just too ubiquitous and too deeply woven into life. If you want to do more than you're doing, there are lots of avenues, many that wouldn't...

You ask whether it's "less wrong" to create the child than for one adult to deny the other the chance of parenthood. That makes it sound as if the only possible wrong on the adults' side is the willing adult being denied parenthood. Wouldn't it also be wrong for the unwilling adult to be forced into parenthood? In any event, if the two adults go ahead with procreation, on grounds that it's "less wrong" to make the child, that seems like the wrong way to start the parent-child relationship. A parent's gain, in becoming a parent, shouldn't be at the child's expense. To start off the relationship on the right foot, they have to believe that giving life to the child-to-be is right, not merely "less wrong." Might it be right, under these circumstances? That's a very hard question. The crux of it is whether it's fair to the child to be given a life that will foreseeably include early loss of a parent. You might say it's fine, on grounds that in all probability the child will still have a life...

I would be reluctant to decide all questions about the treatment of animals on the basis of pain and pleasure. That standard leads to some strange results. Say you put a wild bird in a cage, and you anticipate that he will suffer from the frustration of not being able to fly. So first you give him No Fly Drug, which is guaranteed to eliminate his frustration. Or perhaps you keep your dog in a crate 24 hours a day, and after a year she completely gives up, zones out, and stops suffering. Does her adaptation now give you an excuse to leave her there forever? The offense in each case is not a matter of causing pain (or decreasing pleasure) but--intuitively--a matter of being disrespectful. I'm inclined to think we owe respect only to things at least capable of consciousness, though what we owe them is not exclusively sensitivity to their pain and pleasure. So if ants have no conscious life whatever, they do have the moral status of flowers, and nothing we ever do to them is disrespectful. But...

I think it's unnatural to describe the problem for the dog or bird (in my 5/21 examples) simply as missed happiness, but we can easily just block that explanation by supposing they are drugged into feeling no pain and feeling happy. I still see the severe restriction of the animals' lives as morally problematic. Many people do find it quite intuitive to say that such treatment is disrespectful, though there are other ways of describing what's going wrong (for example, in terms of capacities not being used or rights being violated). I grant, though, that for some philosophers all that matters ethically is maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. That's certainly one venerable position.

No. I think there's a very basic sort of respect for living things that's lacking in someone who smashes ants just for fun. This isn't respect in the full-blown sense Kant had in mind when he said persons are owed respect, but it's not completely different either. Ants aren't just rocks or clumps of dirt, but little centers of living (whether sentient or not) that ought to be left alone if they're not doing any harm. Which means: it's different if they're biting your toe or eating your lunch. The kid who smashes ants for fun is committing a little sin right then and there, I think, but I'd also worry about possible follow-ups. What other living things may he or she see as totally valueless and disposable? Perhaps we don't need to worry that ant-smashers will graduate to people-smashing, but I'd worry about associated disrespectfulness toward nature and other animals.

You can find out about Singer's position on infanticide here-- http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/faq.html

This seems like many other agreements two people might make, and not in a class by itself. On the whole, we should keep our promises, but we don't want the law to step in and enforce all of them. If a woman promises not to have an abortion, then she surely she should keep the promise. It would be the same in the other direction. A woman might ask a man to agree not ask her to have an abortion, if she should become pregnant. Morally, both have at least a prima facie obligation to keep their promises. The law is another matter. If by making any promise we incurred the risk of being dragged into a courtroom, we'd make promises very sparingly. And then a valuable way of managing our personal relationships would be virtually lost. In this particular situation, either party would be able to foresee that the other could renege on the agreement. After all, as we all know, it's hard to predict what one will really want to do about something as life-changing as a pregnancy. A reasonable person...

I've thought about this issue a lot, as a vegetarian with two children (now both 12). We decided it would be better to let them choose for themselves. My thinking was: if we raised them as vegetarians, they would inevitably come into contact with meat and feel curious, tempted, guilty. Out of concern for their wellbeing, I wanted to avoid that. I also thought they would experience vegetarianism as an imposition and eventually rebel against it. Plus, I wanted them to have the experience of confronting a moral issue for themselves. This is how things have turned out (so far)--When my kids were very young, all the food I prepared was vegetarian, but I bought cold cuts for sandwiches, let them order meat in restaurants and at school. At age 6, my daughter decided to stop eating meat. I practically discouraged this, giving her permission to change her mind, give in to temptation, etc. In fact, she became steadily more consistent, resolute, and outspoken. At age 12, my son made the same decision. ...

I have struggled with similar dilemmas, as a non-believing member of a Jewish religious congregation. It looks like you have four options--(1) leave the church entirely, (2) teach in the normal fashion, (3) teach non-literally, and (4) remain in the church but don't teach. You've made up your mind against (1), and you're struggling between (2) and (3). I think you're right to be worried about (2). It concerns me the way Sunday school teachers stand before children and present religious stories exactly as if they were history teachers or science teachers. This does exploit the credulousness of children in a way that is problematic. It's been way too long since I read Austin, so I don't know what he says about the "backstage artiste," but I think it's fine for children to be taught that religious material is "meaningful to us" but not historically or scientifically true. The problem is that I doubt other congregants would think it's fine (unless your church is extremely liberal). So I can't...

From what I recall (and I'm recalling going to a US highschool way back in the 20th century), there's quite a bit to the semiotics of hickeys. The bruise says something--to you personally, but also to the world (if you hair is mobile). It broadcasts "I have a boyfriend and we're intimate," but it also hints at sex to the point of hurting. Maybe your parents have concerns about the broadcasting, or about "to the point of hurting." Maybe they're wondering "what next?" Maybe... Well, you could speculate endlessly. There's no way to know without asking them. You might discover that they're worried not so much about morality but about your emotional and physical health.