Norm Phelps | |
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| Born | Norman Nelson Phelps, III May 16, 1939 US |
| Died | December 31, 2014(2014-12-31) (aged 75) |
| Resting place | Maryland |
| Occupation | Author, animal advocate |
| Alma mater | University of Maryland, College Park |
| Period | late 20th century; early 21st century |
| Genre | Religious philosophy |
| Subjects | vegetarianism,veganism,animal rights,spirituality |
| Literary movement | Animal rights; religion and animal rights; religion; animal advocacy |
| Spouse | Patti Rogers[1] |
| Children | 2 children Norman Nelson Phelps, IV and Kyra E (Phelps) Bleichner5 grandchildren Quinn, TJ, Haley, Danny and Reagan |
| Website | |
| animals and ethics | |
Norm Phelps (bornNorman Nelson Phelps, III; May 16, 1939 – December 31, 2014)[2][3] was an Americananimal rights activist,vegetarian and writer. He was a founding member of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV),[4] and a former outreach director of theFund for Animals.[5] He authored four books on animal rights:The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible (2002),The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights (2004),The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA (2007), andChanging the Game: Animal Liberation in the Twenty-first Century (2015).
Phelps spoke at numerous conferences, including theNational Conference on Organized Resistance, the University of Oregon'sPublic Interest Environmental Law Conference, several of the annual Animal Rights Conferences sponsored by theFarm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), and the Compassionate Living Festival. He also published articles, essays, and book reviews in several periodicals:Journal of Critical Animal Studies,[6]Philosophia,Satya,The Animals’ Voice, andVegNews.
Phelps had become avegetarian and then avegan following the death of hisdog Czar in 1984. As Phelps describes this change process on his website, "Czar was a person. He had apersonality as individual and well-defined as anyhuman being. He could love, he could trust, he could share, he could enjoy, he could fear, he could worry, he could look forward to the future and remember the past, he had a sense of who he was, and he would have sacrificed himself for me without a moment's hesitation. . . . If Czar was a person, what about other animals? What aboutcows,pigs,chickens andsheep? Weren't they people, too? How could we love some and eat others?"
In 1994, Phelps retired from the federal government and joined the campaigns office of The Fund for Animals inSilver Spring, Maryland, where he became active in the campaign to end the livepigeon shoot which was then held everyLabor Day in the village ofHegins, Pennsylvania. The shoot ended in 1998. When The Fund for Animals merged withThe Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Phelps joined the staff of the HSUSwildlife protection campaign, where he worked until he resigned for reasons of age and health in 2011. From 2002 until his death in 2014, Phelps had suffered from myasthenia gravis, an auto-immune neuromuscular condition that causes severe fatigable weakness.
As an animal rights theorist, Phelps argues that the animal rights movement must: 1) Engage religious communities on the side of animal rights, 2) Join with progressive movements for social and economic justice and environmental protection to create a genuine universal rights movement, and 3) pursue a "two-track" strategy of advocating veganism and the abolition of all animal exploitation while simultaneously campaigning for more moderate reforms, such as Meatless Mondays and the abolition ofbattery cages for laying hens. Although he is generally opposed to militant direct action on the grounds that it is counterproductive, Phelps supported live rescues of animals from farms and laboratories. In 1994, he was arrested at a pigeon shoot in Pikeville,Pennsylvania for releasing 200 pigeons who were slated to become living targets. He spent two days in Berks County Prison and was subsequently convicted of malicious mischief.
He lived inFunkstown, Maryland (USA) with his second wife, Patti Rogers. Phelps died on December 31, 2014, at the age of 75.[7]
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