Tag Archives: Gary Yourofsky

Same Old Gary Yourofsky

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Gary Yourofsky’s relationship with People for the Ethical Treatment seems to have ended, but Yourofsky is still traveling around the country giving speeches in favor of vegetarianism with his Animals Deserve Absolute Protection Today and Tomorrow organization. And he’s still actively supporting violence.

According to CUNY student newspaper, The Word, Yourofsky gave presentations to a couple journalism classes there.

Yourofsky, who wore a gray Animal Liberation Front T-shirt, said he wanted to eradicate speciesism . . .

As part of his speech, Yourofsky cites famous and presumably admirable people who are vegetarians. But his list contains at least one oddity (emphasis added),

Yourofsky mentioned famous people like Martin Luther King Jr. III, Minister Louis Farrakhan, and author Alice Walker. All, he said, adopted vegan lifestyles because they view the killing of animals as a form of oppression.

Louis Farrakhan? The man who called Jews, Koreans and Vietnamese immigrants in New York “bloodsuckers”?

Well, at least Yourofsky has found someone as noxious as he to share his vegetarianism with.

Sources:

Veganistic Deja Vu. William Frances, The Word, January 5, 2006.

Million Man March: Its goal more widely accepted than its leader. CNN, October 17, 1995.

Gary Yourofsky's State-of-the-Art in Pro-Vegan Arguments

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When he’s not busy saying that he would unequivocally support the murder of people working in animal enterprises, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals spokesman Gary Yourofksy travels the country with Kate Timko trying to talk students at universities into switching to veganism.

Don’t worry, though, the foray into institutes of higher learning won’t change Yourofsky. The Daily Pennsylvanian, for example, reports that Yourofsky offered the following as an example to buttress his claim that human beings weren’t meant to eat meat,

Put a 2-year-old in a crib with a bunny rabbit and an apple. If the child eats the bunny rabbit and plays with the apple, I’ll buy you a new car.

Wow — PETA’s really getting their money’s worth out of Yourofsky. Yourofsky told The Daily Pennsylvanian that he converts 2-5 people a day to veganism. With arguments like that, I’m surprised he isn’t closer to 4-10 people a day!

Meanwhile, Timko manages to make meat eating sound exciting. The Daily Pennsylvanian quoted Timko as saying,

Eating meat really does mean eating dead animals. It means that your body is transformed into a walking animal graveyard.

Who knew that eating meat meant eating dead animals? You learn something new everyday.

On the other hand, that image of a walking animal graveyard sounds pretty cool. It’d make a great horror film (Pet Sematary 3 anyone?)

Source:

Animal rights activists hype veganism. Alanna Kaufman, The Daily Pennsylvanian, September 27, 2004.

Are Animals Unnatural?

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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals lecturers Gary Yourofsky and Kate Timko visited Roanoake Rapids, North Carolina this week in order to offer dietary advice for residents there — including the suggestion that it’s wrong to eat animals because they are not natural.

Yourofsky told a group at a local community college that, “We are not meat-eating creatures. We’re all born vegans.” He then went on about the supposed health problems related to eating meat.

To which Timko offered some odd advice, according to the Roanoake Daily Herald,

Folks, eat what comes from the ground. It is natural.

Does she mean that only plants are natural? Or that humans eating meat is unnatural, despite the fact that hominids have been doing it for as long as 2.5 million years?

The only unnatural thing here seems to be the ridiculous hoops that animal rights activists jump through to convince people not to eat meat (which probably explains their lack of success).

Source:

HCC students encouraged to go vegan. Jennifer Heaslip, Daily Herald (Roanoake Rapids, North Carolina), April 28, 2004.

Yourofsky Loses It In Tennessee

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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ national lecturer Gary Yourofsky showed off the famed ability of animal rights activists to make their case by throwing a fit at East Tennessee State where he was scheduled to talk about vegetarianism.

Yourofsky became angered when he entered the hall where he was to speak and saw a display put up by East Tennessee State’s director of the Division of Laboratory Animal Resources, Dr. Brunhilde Toper-Meyer.

Toper-Meyer had placed a number of pamphlets from Americans for Medical Progress, the FOundation for Biomedical Research and other groups with a simple sign saying “Opposing Arguments.”

Yourofsky — who is on record as condoning both arson and murder in the name of animal rights — decided the presence of the pamphlets warranted throwing a tantrum. He became abusive toward Eastern Tennessee biology instructor Sharon Miller, who had invited Yourofsky to talk in the first place, and likened her to the Ku Klux Klan.

In the end Yourofsky grabbed the cart and gave it a hard push, causing the pamphlets to scatter throughout the hall outside the lecture room. Eastern Tennessee State police were called, and the lecture was cancelled.

The most bizarre part of this, is that it surprised Miller. According to the Johnson City Press,

Miller said she was sorry that Yourofsky did not speak, saying he is a powerful orator and the subject of the afternoon’s lecture — vegetarianism — was not supposed to be controversial.

What planet is this woman living on? What did she think she would be getting from someone who once said, “Do not be afraid to condone arsons at places of animal torture” and “I would unequivocally support” an arson that lead to the death of an “animal abuser” at a research lab.

And powerful orator? Does Miller agree with Yourofsky that human beings are herbivores? If she does, she’s certainly not much of a biologist, and if she doesn’t why the hell is she inviting someone to speak whose ideas are patently false?

Source:

ETSU event canceled due to confrontation. John Thompson, Johnson City Press (TN), April 5, 2003.

Gary Yourofsky's Transparent Nonsense

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Gary Yourofsky’s been speaking at colleges and revealing why he’s such a good fit as a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — his claims are so transparently stupid that, like the organization he’s working for now, every time he opens his mouth Yourofsky says something to discredit his movement.

For example, here’s what Yourofsky told student at Indiana State university,

Human beings are not carnivores or omnivores in any shape or form. Human beings are herbivores.

Yourofsky backed that absurd statement up by claiming that, as the Indiana Statesman paraphrased it, “Animal ingredients were never meant to be in human bodies, he said. Animals eat the whole animal, humans only eat parts and cooked parts.”

Well, yes, but human beings are able to only eat certain parts of the plant and with some common staples must cook plants as well. I assume that because millions of Africans have to carefully prepare and cook cassava before they can safely eat it, that this means that plant ingredients were never meant to be in human bodies!

And, of course, being that this is Yourofsky, he had to throw in the obligatory comparison between him and Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi and Jesus Christ. Funny, I don’t remember either of those three openly condoning murder as Yourofsky has done in the past, do you?

I honestly cannot think of anything better for PETA to do with its money than pay Yourofsky to travel the country telling people that humans are herbivores and that he is just like Jesus. I think they’ve really got a winning combination on their hands there.

Source:

Animal rights activist shares views with campus. Josh Cannon, Indiana Statesman, April 2, 2003.

Gary Yourofsky — Killing Researchers Is Okay, But Don't Touch That Turkey!

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One of the more absurd commentaries on dietary choices for Thanksgiving had to come from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ Gary Yourofsky lecturing people about choosing tofu over turkey.

Yourofsky told about 30 students gathered at Midwestern State University,

I do not eat anything – or a product of anything – with a face, a mother or a bowl movement. . . . But I’m not an animal lover. Call me anything but an animal lover. . . . [I want] simple decency [for animals] . . .of all the exploited beings on earth, animals are the most terrorized.

Apparently Yourofsky has forgotten his advocacy of terrorizing anyone who dares disagree with him. As he told The Toledo Blade in the Summer of 2001, “we must be willing to do whatever it takes to gain their [animals] freedom and stop their torture.” When asked if this extended to killing “animal abusers” Yourofsky said, without missing a beat, “I would unequivocally support that, too.”

Yourofsky’s concern about simple decency and terrorism stops with his fellow human beings.

Source:

PETA rep pitches turkey-less holiday. Brye Butler, Times Record News (Texas), November 30, 2002.

Gary Yourofsky — Killing Researchers Is Okay, But Don’t Touch That Turkey!

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One of the more absurd commentaries on dietary choices for Thanksgiving had to come from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ Gary Yourofsky lecturing people about choosing tofu over turkey.

Yourofsky told about 30 students gathered at Midwestern State University,

I do not eat anything – or a product of anything – with a face, a mother or a bowl movement. . . . But I’m not an animal lover. Call me anything but an animal lover. . . . [I want] simple decency [for animals] . . .of all the exploited beings on earth, animals are the most terrorized.

Apparently Yourofsky has forgotten his advocacy of terrorizing anyone who dares disagree with him. As he told The Toledo Blade in the Summer of 2001, “we must be willing to do whatever it takes to gain their [animals] freedom and stop their torture.” When asked if this extended to killing “animal abusers” Yourofsky said, without missing a beat, “I would unequivocally support that, too.”

Yourofsky’s concern about simple decency and terrorism stops with his fellow human beings.

Source:

PETA rep pitches turkey-less holiday. Brye Butler, Times Record News (Texas), November 30, 2002.

PETA’s Sensitivity to Terrorism Accusations

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The Virginian-Pilot ran an article in June about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ apparent growing concern about accusation that it funds and/or supports animal rights terrorism.

Reporter Bill Burke notes that for once Ingrid Newkirk has been keeping a low profile on this topic and letting PETA’s general counsel, Jeffrey S. Kerr, field all press inquiries about the allegations. Kerr tells Burke,

The whole notion that PETA supports terrorism is false and defamatory. When you use the word ‘terror,’ look at the terror inflicted on billions of animals in this country every year. That’s real terror.

. . .

They’re [PETA's opponents] trying to smear us any way they can.

In a letter to a House subcommittee investigating ecoterror, Kerr wrote that it “is an insult to the victims of Sept. 11th” to suggest that PETA fosters terrorism. “It is reprehensible for PETA’s opponents to equate peaceful and lawful animal protection with al-Quaida or any other type of terrorism, and to exploit that tragedy for expedient political gain.”

In other words, when PETA’s point man on fur, Dan Matthews, said he admired serial killer Andrew Cunanan “because he got Versace to stop doing fur” — that must have been some other Dan Matthews working for some other animal rights group.

And when Bruce Friedrich told an audience at Animal Rights 2001 that while he doesn’t personally advocate animal rights terrorism, “I do advocate it, and I think it’s a great way to bring about animal liberation” — well, he was probably a victim of some mind control scheme by those evil folks over at The Center for Consumer Freedom.

At the very least, when Ingrid Newkirk was quoted in 1997 as saying, “I wish we all would get up and go into the labs and take the animals out or burn them down,” that was probably a case of mistaken identity. That was really Ingrid Bergman back from the dead saying such vicious things, because everyone knows Ingrid Newkirk would never even think such a thing.

PETA’s press blackout on the terrorism allegations included refusing an interview request with Gary Yourofsky. Yourofsky has an Animal Liberation Front tattoo on his arm and said just over a year ago that animal activists should “not be afraid to condone arsons at places of animal torture” and said that if an animal researcher were killed in such a raid “I would unequivocally support that too.”

That sort of resume makes him perfect material for PETA which hired Yourofsky on as a “humane education presenter” after Yourofsky sent out an e-mail whining that he was broke and leaving the animal rights movement temporarily.

The bottom line is that the widespread support for terrorism within the animal rights movement harms groups and individuals associated with it far more than it poses any credible threat to bringing medical research or animal agriculture to a halt. Fortunately it is not that difficult to make the link since so many prominent animal rights activists apparently see the need to endorse or condone criminal acts in order to appease the extremists who seem to set the agenda within the animal rights movement.

For this reason, The Center for Consumer Freedom’s print ad featuring a Bruce Friedrich quote is easily the most powerful anti-animal rights ad I’ve seen. Hopefully there will be a follow-up with some choice quotes from Yourofsky.

The animal rights movement is intellectually bankrupt on a number of issues, but its willingness to endorse violence and criminal acts makes discrediting the movement to all but the true believers relatively simple. Personally, I’m glad that PETA hired Yourofksy and that Newkirk and Friedrich decided to wax on about their support of terrorism. It certainly makes it much easier to illustrate just how extreme even the most nominally mainstream animal rights organizations are.

Source:

Terrorism accusations raise hackles at PETA. Bill Burke, The Virginian-Pilot, June 22, 2002.

PETA's Sensitivity to Terrorism Accusations

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The Virginian-Pilot ran an article in June about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ apparent growing concern about accusation that it funds and/or supports animal rights terrorism.

Reporter Bill Burke notes that for once Ingrid Newkirk has been keeping a low profile on this topic and letting PETA’s general counsel, Jeffrey S. Kerr, field all press inquiries about the allegations. Kerr tells Burke,

The whole notion that PETA supports terrorism is false and defamatory. When you use the word ‘terror,’ look at the terror inflicted on billions of animals in this country every year. That’s real terror.

. . .

They’re [PETA's opponents] trying to smear us any way they can.

In a letter to a House subcommittee investigating ecoterror, Kerr wrote that it “is an insult to the victims of Sept. 11th” to suggest that PETA fosters terrorism. “It is reprehensible for PETA’s opponents to equate peaceful and lawful animal protection with al-Quaida or any other type of terrorism, and to exploit that tragedy for expedient political gain.”

In other words, when PETA’s point man on fur, Dan Matthews, said he admired serial killer Andrew Cunanan “because he got Versace to stop doing fur” — that must have been some other Dan Matthews working for some other animal rights group.

And when Bruce Friedrich told an audience at Animal Rights 2001 that while he doesn’t personally advocate animal rights terrorism, “I do advocate it, and I think it’s a great way to bring about animal liberation” — well, he was probably a victim of some mind control scheme by those evil folks over at The Center for Consumer Freedom.

At the very least, when Ingrid Newkirk was quoted in 1997 as saying, “I wish we all would get up and go into the labs and take the animals out or burn them down,” that was probably a case of mistaken identity. That was really Ingrid Bergman back from the dead saying such vicious things, because everyone knows Ingrid Newkirk would never even think such a thing.

PETA’s press blackout on the terrorism allegations included refusing an interview request with Gary Yourofsky. Yourofsky has an Animal Liberation Front tattoo on his arm and said just over a year ago that animal activists should “not be afraid to condone arsons at places of animal torture” and said that if an animal researcher were killed in such a raid “I would unequivocally support that too.”

That sort of resume makes him perfect material for PETA which hired Yourofsky on as a “humane education presenter” after Yourofsky sent out an e-mail whining that he was broke and leaving the animal rights movement temporarily.

The bottom line is that the widespread support for terrorism within the animal rights movement harms groups and individuals associated with it far more than it poses any credible threat to bringing medical research or animal agriculture to a halt. Fortunately it is not that difficult to make the link since so many prominent animal rights activists apparently see the need to endorse or condone criminal acts in order to appease the extremists who seem to set the agenda within the animal rights movement.

For this reason, The Center for Consumer Freedom’s print ad featuring a Bruce Friedrich quote is easily the most powerful anti-animal rights ad I’ve seen. Hopefully there will be a follow-up with some choice quotes from Yourofsky.

The animal rights movement is intellectually bankrupt on a number of issues, but its willingness to endorse violence and criminal acts makes discrediting the movement to all but the true believers relatively simple. Personally, I’m glad that PETA hired Yourofksy and that Newkirk and Friedrich decided to wax on about their support of terrorism. It certainly makes it much easier to illustrate just how extreme even the most nominally mainstream animal rights organizations are.

Source:

Terrorism accusations raise hackles at PETA. Bill Burke, The Virginian-Pilot, June 22, 2002.

PETA Puts Supporter of Violence on Its Payroll

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Gary Yourofsky’s absence from the animal rights movement was short lived as the advocate of violence distributed a letter this week indicating that he is now on the payroll of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Yourofsky writes in his letter,

The day after my resignation letter was sent out a couple of months ago, I received a phone call from Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s founder and president. Ingrid called after Bruce Friedrich, PETA’s Director of Vegan Outreach, informed her of my situation. As most of you recall, after six years of volunteering for ADAPTT, I resigned as ADAPTT’s president due to financial ruin.

Ingrid’s message was touching and emotional, to say the least. Frankly, I was blown away that Ingrid would call me with concern because I could no longer continue my activism. Getting a call and/or a request from Ingrid is like getting a call from the Godfather’s Don Corleone. It’s an offer one can’t refuse.

In a nutshell, Ingrid and PETA wanted to know what they could do to keep me involved. We’ve been in negotiations ever since. Then, on Monday, May 20, PETA made me its official, national lecturer. This union will benefit the animals immensely. Words cannot describe the joy that I am experiencing over this alliance.

Yourofsky’s comparison of Newkirk to the fictional Don Corleone is quite apt. Newkirk says she wishes she could torch labs, hires people who admire serial killers and advocate violence, contributes to legal funds for accused animal rights terrorists, and now has hired on Yourofsky who once said that, “I would unequivocally support” murder in order to further animal rights aims. Oh yeah, that’s a real peace loving, nonviolent bunch of folks right there.

Yourofksy is planning to hit the lecture tour and PETA apparently plans to sell recorded copies of his rantings. Yourofksy writes,

After watching my 68-minute presentation, PETA, like many others in this movement, believed that my vegan/animal liberation lecture was damn persuasive! So, our goal now is to have DAILY lectures set up in schools across the U.S. when the fall semester begins next September. Several people will be helping me achieve this goal. Plus, at the end of June, an oration will be recorded at a Michigan college and placed on VHS, DVD, and CD (audio). These items will be featured in PETA’s next issue of Animal Times which will be available in the PETA catalogue. This will help us reach many educators across the country.

The rest of Yourofsky’s letter is given to defending himself against charges that he’s “sold out,” since he used to blast PETA every chance he got. Yourofksy writes,

By the way, those closest to me know that I have been growing wiser as each year of activism passes. I used to be flat-out vituperative when it came to PETA and other groups who didn’t do things my way. But last year I started to realize that my acrimony was wrong and wasteful. . . .

Moreover, after spending a week here at PETA’s HQ in Norfolk, Virginia, I now see that PETA people work damn hard for the animals. There are 100 Yourofskys working in this building, each activist doing what they do best. Every activist should be required to meet our PETA brethren face-to-face and attend a monthly staff meeting to see all the hard work and achievements. While I may have had tactical differences with PETA, I have had tactical differences with EVERY group and EVERY activist involved in animal liberation, even the ALF!!!! Heck, I don’t even agree with myself sometimes!

For any of you out there who feel that I’ve sold out or something like that — let me paraphrase Paul Watson by saying what makes you think I care what you have to say? Creating an image for one’s self is NOT more important than fighting for animal freedom. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “I work for the animals and the animals alone.” And, thanks to largest animal rights organization in the world and its founder Ingrid Newkirk, I can now continue my work!

Of course. The $10,000 that PETA gave Yourofsky to run anti-fur advertisements in the Detroit-area played no role whatsoever in his sudden change of heart.

Source:

Open Letter. Gary Yourofsky, May 28, 2002.