AR-News: (LA) Lafayette Advertiser Endorses Bill to Ban Cockfighting

[Political Animal]

Now the major newspapers in the four largest cities in
LA have all endorsed H.B. 681, the bill to ban
cockfighting!  If you live in LA, please contact your
state legislators and ask them to support H.B. 681.
---
http://www.theadvertiser.com/ouropinion/html/FF644F4C-A151-4B03-B466-3CE8C7DF6686.shtml

 

 

The Advertiser (Lafayette, Louisiana)

Editorials

 

State Legislature should vote in cockfighting ban 
 
 
 

 
April 15, 2004
 
 
 
Issue: Poll shows 82 percent of voters favor an end to
the blood sport.
We Suggest: Lawmakers should honor the will of the
people.

The Louisiana Legislature is going through its annual
ritual of entertaining legislation that would ban
cockfighting. Efforts to remove the cloak of legality
have failed for decades, but this time opponents of
the ancient blood sport are better armed. 

A recent poll by the Humane Society of the United
States showed that 82 percent of Louisiana’s voters
favor a ban. 

We hope lawmakers accept this message from the people
and vote to bring an end to the sport. We realize that
it will be a hard-fought battle. 

The mechanisms that make cockfighting legally
defensible are flimsy, but opponents have never been
able to break through them. The first is an old
attorney general’s opinion that laws against cruelty
to animals don’t apply. 

Long-time Attorney General Jack Gremillion rendered
his opinion that roosters aren’t animals at a time
when some of the state’s most powerful political
figures had principal ownership in a private club
organized for cockfighting.In 1982, Raymond Lalonde of
Carencro, then a state representative, turned the
peculiar ruling into a state statute.

Proponents of cockfighting often compare the sport to
professional boxing in the human world. The comparison
might be valid if boxers wore surgical steel blades on
their hands that could inflict fatal wounds. 

Proponents of the sport are correct in their claims
that the feathered combatants are unusually well
treated and are incredibly brave. They will continue
to do battle even after being slashed repeatedly,
brutally and fatally. When they are finally ripped to
death in the ring, however, their corpses are usually
tossed aside like road-kill.

We urge legislators to respond to the will of the
people. Vote as 82 percent of the electorate has. End
this bloody sport. Its time has passed. 
 
 
 
 
 
©The Lafayette Daily Advertiser
 
April 15, 2004
 

 



	
		
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