PETA’s Big Lie About “Gay Sheep”

A few weeks ago I reported about the anger expressed by some gay activists about animal research reportedly aimed at making gay sheep straight. I blogged the story, not in order to deal with gay/straight issues, but to point out its relevance to the hubristic human enhancement agenda.

I soon received information that the story was badly misconstrued due to PETA machinations, which were also posted in the comments section of the original post. I didn’t post directly about these rumblings because, 1) the original story was in the Sunday Times of London, which had not retracted, and 2) because my point had nothing to do with gay/straight issues—which we do not discuss here—but the dangers associated with the new eugenics.

But now, the New York Times has published a story demonstrating that the original report was indeed seriously misconstrued due to PETA fabrications. The point was not to learn how turn gay sheep straight and then apply the technology in humans, but to learn why gay sheep are gay. This involved killing the animals to study their brains, which for PETA, should be absolutely forbidden for any purpose.

This raises an important point: PETA is not a credible organization. Its activists are expert propagandists. If the whole truth will serve its purposes, it will be told. If half truths and half lies serve better, it will take that route. And it is expert at lying by omission, as in a story I covered about PETA’s campaign to destroy the Australian wool industry.