In addition to last week’s wholesale condemnation at the hands of newspapers in Tampa, Daytona, and Vero Beach, animal activists trying to win constitutional protection for pigs now have a whole new list of setbacks. The Pensacola News Journal has come out against the proposed animal-rights amendment, as have larger-market editorial pages in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and Orlando.
Fort Lauderdale’s Sun-Sentinel editorial board calls Florida’s Amendment 10 “a solution in search of a problem.” Even the paper’s columnists are scoffing at the idea of declaring the state constitution open to radical agendas. Local writer Michael Mayo wrote yesterday that opening up the document to animal rights matters “only cheapens it… When voters can amend the constitution to control how pig farmers run their business or who can smoke where, that seems to be starting a slippery slope. Where does it end?”
The Miami Herald this morning declared the proposed pig farming ballot question “an inappropriate use of the amendment process,” and the Orlando Sentinel concluded that the animal rights agenda “doesn’t belong in the state constitution.”
So far, only the St. Petersburg Times and the college-town Gainesville Sun have suggested that writing animal rights into Florida’s constitution is a good idea.
