Animal Cruelty

Sexually exploiting minors is illegal. Therefore the creation, dissemination, and possession of child pornography are illegal. They are illegal for the purpose of protecting children and discouraging the abuse of children in general. Cases like “Ferber” and “Osborne” operate under the harm and mixes of the harm and offense principles. We need to prevent children from the physical and mentally harm that can occur from being exploited in pornography. But when it comes to animals, do we have the same duty to protect them and prevent future harm from occurring? What kind of rights should we extend to animals?

In the recent case of U.S. vs. Stevens, The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision made by Congress that made it a federal crime to creat, possess, or sell “crush videos” and other images of unlawful cruelty to animals. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals found that the government had no “compelling” interests in suppressing speech and images depicting animal cruelty. They didn’t recognize analogies to “Ferber” and “Osborne” and overall felt that the law was overly broad and would concern too many other related instances. There were also thoughts that human expression rights outweigh any basic rights of animals, and that animals don’t suffer the same physiological damages that children who participate in pornography do as they grow up.

It is my opinion that the original decision made by Congress, to make “crush videos” and other unlawful images of animal cruelty a federal crime, should have been upheld. Depictions of animal cruelty should be just as unprotected as child porn. Even if one feels that animals have no rights what-so-ever there are still compelling reasons for the government to outlaw animal cruelty speech. Operating under the harm principle, we need to consider the kind of harm that can occur to both humans and animals. Abusing animals is illegal in the United States, and in order to prevent abuse of all kinds (including private abuse) we need to put a stop to the creation and dissemination of this material.

Chaffe would not have considered animal cruelty to be protected speech. His theory on "protecting speech that serves a social interest," "worthless" speech refers to profane, indecent, or defamatory speech, which is of "slight social value as a step toward truth" Animal cruelty does not serve any social interest and is considered by the majority of people in the United States to be indecent. Therefore it's creation, possession, and sale should be made illegal.


Those exposed to videos of dog fighting videos or other forms may feel that the behavior is acceptable if they see a recording of it. Impressionable children especially need to be protected from seeing this material; less they grow up thinking animal abuse is suitable behavior. The same goes for adults, even a full grown adult may be swayed to participate in animal cruelty if he’s lead to believe he could make money, friends, or just have fun doing it. With this thought in mind we need to consider that animal cruelty harms more than just the animals within it. Such speech would have a bad tendency to encourage people to continue the behavior. And if one argues that it becomes difficult to judge the jurisdiction based on where the video was created then we need cite the “Osborne vs. Ohio” case and argue that we need to also dry up the market for such material, and make the mere possession of animal cruelty material illegal.