This debate is very interresting indeed. And I loved most of what I read.
This post is a good position for me, and may actually bring some peace in the debate. I should say I am trying to be a ethical omnivore which seems to me a more moderate position. And I also like very much meat.
I would say I quite agree the ethical position really depends on where you draw the line. Personally, I’m a human not any other animal, and I think it’s easier to be healthy with the possibility of meat. I agree for the less pain as possible, but see no wrong by eating meat, if the animal had been well-treated. Where should we draw the line? Good question, but hard to convince any one that you can have the good answer. Tolerance is key.

By your logic, I’d be justified in concluding that all omnivores are as absurd as you are. It’s lucky for them that I don’t do that.

I’m happy to keep answering your questions, though: I do think it’s more wrong to kill a human than to kill an animal. This is implicit in what I said to Roxanne above – that if for some strange reason I was forced to choose between having a chicken killed and having a human killed, I would choose to have the chicken killed. Fortunately, though, such strange situations rarely if ever crop up in real life.

But the ethics of killing is a complicated business, to the point where people profoundly differ in their opinions of why it’s wrong to take a human life, and what exceptions might be made. Is abortion OK? Euthanasia? Capital punishment? Suicide? Is there a moral difference between killing someone and allowing her to die? Is the right to life like pregnancy, where either you have it or you don’t, or are there shades of gray? These are all things that people disagree about. And since people have such very different opinions about what makes it wrong (or not wrong) to kill humans, they’re naturally going to have different opinions on how the differences between humans and animals figure into the wrongness of killing.

But my reasons for being vegan have very little to do with the ethics of killing. In my view, what’s wrong about animal agriculture is not that animals are killed, but that the vast majority of them suffer enormously while they’re alive. And because of my circumstances (I live in a city, I don’t drive, and I like vegan food), it is just easier for me to avoid all animal foods than to seek out some that have been produced without suffering.

Is there anything else you’d like me to explain?

It was Vegans, not I, who burned the bridge with their “Things would be better if all the meat eaters DIED!” and “I would rather kill a speciesist than an animal” and “Humans are a virus” and “Holocaust on your plate”. Instead of fervent disavowal and shame for these revoltingly common Vegan beliefs, we have tacit agreement from the Vegans here that it is, after all, the meat-eaters who are in the wrong, so whatever Vegans say, no matter how horrible, can be attributed to a trivial fit of pique. Face it: you *are* the company you keep. There is no shortage of Vegans who viciously hate human beings, and if you don’t own up to that, then how can you critizize me for casting aspersions on your character when you regard those freakish misanthropes as your brothers and sisters?

It is not hateful of me to repeat what Vegans say and think. The hate comes from Vegans, not from those who hold them in contempt precisely for their proud and unrepentant hatred.

To answer your question, the reason I continue to dialoge with Vegans is to show that their ethical position is completely bankrupt and that the contempt they garner is well-earned. If they want to be treated with respect, then they must learn to first treat others with respect. They have much to account for, that specifically being the abhorrently anti-social behavior of those they count as brethren.

Johanna, your answer is incomplete. Is killing a human being just as wrong as killing an animal, or is it more wrong to kill a human than it is to kill an animal?

an interview with activists on BlackVegetarians.org where the question of comparing opressions is addressed… Scroll down a bit.

http://www.blackvegetarians.org/features/newfeature.htm