ATLANTA, DES MOINES, KANSAS CITY, MISSOULA, TOPEKA––Enlisting help from both Jesus and the Beatles, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals scored a string of media hits against meat-eating and fishing in early summer.
Thirty-three years after the late John Lennon provoked the biggest uproar of the Beatles’ career by speculating, after a Beatles concert outdrew church attendence, that the group might have become more popular than Jesus, Paul McCartney emerged from mourning his late wife Linda to announce the first airing of a 15-second anti-fishing TV commercial that Linda made for PETA shortly before her death. The commercial was broadcast on NBC during National Fishing Week.
Telling media he was escalating his animal rights activity in Linda’s memory, McCartney also announced a British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection campaign against testing household products on animals––reinforced on June 30 when BUAV revealed recent findings from an undercover investigation at Harlan IK, in Belton, Leicestershire, a leading breeder of beagles for laboratory use.
A 60-by-20-foot PETA billboard proclaiming “Jesus was a vegetarian” meanwhile stole the show at the Southern Baptists’ national convention in Atlanta, provoking public debate over whether Jesus did or did not eat meat. Greek translations of the Gospels indicate that he did; other translations indicate he did not. Prevailing scholarly belief is that Jesus was strongly influenced by the Essenes, a Jewish sect who were vegetarians.
PETA gained further mostly favorable publicity after outdoor advertising firms in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas rejected as too risque a billboard showing a bikini-clad woman holding a string of sausages, with a statement linking meat-eating to impotence.
PETA drew additional sympathy with an appeal to the U.S. Air Force to halt barehanded rabbit killing as part of survival training at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, California; and the U.S. Army JFK Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Air Force Academy used 438 rabbits in such exercises during June and July 1998, according to records PETA obtained.
But PETA campaign literature likening the treatment of animals in circuses to the treatment of plantation slaves outraged Keith W. Stokes, the Afro-American president of the Chamber of Commerce in Newport County, Rhode Island. As the controversy expanded, Representative Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.) reinforced Stokes’ statements, and the intended focus on the Newport County Chamber of Commerce role in sponsoring an appearance by the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus was largely lost.
Another PETA summer campaign landed newly hired campaign staffer Timothy Andrew Ray, 35, in jail, facing a potential 25-year prison term for felony arson. Ray was arrested on June 10 for allegedly igniting hay bales stacked in front of the main entrance to the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines, as part of a PETA protest against the World Pork Congress, underway nearby.
PETA spokesperson Dawn Carr told Tom Alex of the Des Moines Register that the fire was not a planned part of the protest, and that she did not know Ray.
A day later, however, Carr posted a $6,500 cash bond for Ray, whose bail was set at $32,500.
Americans for Medical Progress meanwhile pointed out that a similar hay-burning incident occurred during a January 1999 PETA protest against the pork industry in Washington D.C., at which 12 people were arrested on relatively minor charges.
Judith Riddell Messimer, webmaster for the St. Louis Animal Rights Team and associate web designer for ANIMAL PEOPLE, said Ray was a longtime St. Louis vegan activist who had just moved from St. Louis to Norfolk, Virginia, to take a job at PETA.
Ray’s identity was briefly unclear, after Carr denied knowing him, as at least four individuals named Tim Ray live near Norfolk.
Also believed to be in Virginia is one Timothy Robert Ray, 40, alias Tommy Burns, who was star witness for the prosecution in the 1996-1997 convictions of 35 persons in connection with killing horses––sometimes by arson––to collect insurance money.