St. Maarten Private Eye

Comparing the cultural acceptance of slavery and cockfighting is perfectly valid to this debate, but equating them would not be - which as far as I can see, nobody did, except Mr Baptiste.

Slavery has been a cultural tradition in all civilizations (including black African ones) since recorded history and only profound humanist thinkers rationalized against it at the time- the rest of society accepted it as perfectly normal.

This, of course, did not make it right.

Thankfully most of the world has now moved on and human slavery is rightfully regarded as an abomination and few would argue for its cultural preservation ( though sadly there are still exceptions to this in Asia and Africa)

Deliberate cruelty to animals for nothing but sport and pleasure, whilst paling in significance against doing the same to humans, also belongs to another age, the dark ages of mans' evolution.

In my opinion, there is nothing for Messrs Laveist or Baptiste to be culturally proud of in protecting the right to seek pleasure and profit from inflicting cruelty on defenseless creatures - and that applies from the bear-baiting of the Middle Ages to the cock fighting in Middle Region.

And lets not forget the illegal dogfighting which we all know goes on - and I wonder what position do messrs Baptiste and Laveist take on this particular cultural tradition?

Le Grenouille