By Bob Allen
The Southern Baptist Convention’s ethics entity has joined in an effort to pass a law making it a felony to own or use a bird for cockfighting in South Carolina.
“God never intended for his chickens to be abused in this manner,” Richard Land, head of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said in a video produced by the Palmetto Family Council. “And I would defy anyone who defends cockfighting to say that they would take Jesus to a cockfight.”
Land called the blood sport, which sometimes includes attaching knife blades to birds’ feet to inflict greater injury, “pornography of violence” and warned that “the people who watch it are going to be brutalized by it.”
Cockfighting has been illegal in South Carolina since 1917, but the penalties are too light to act as a deterrent. Since neighboring states of Georgia and North Carolina have made the practice a felony, more people have crossed state lines to hold cockfights where if arrested they face a relative slap on the wrist.
The Palmetto Family Alliance supports a proposed law to make cockfighting a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Simply owning birds for the purpose of fighting would be punishable by fines of at least $500 or six months in jail.
“Animal cruelty alone would be enough for any clear-thinking individual to want to strengthen our laws in this area, but to Palmetto Family Alliance, there is an even greater concern,” the group says on its website. “In nearly every instance where cockfighting has been shut down in other states, illegal gambling, gun smuggling and in many cases, drug trafficking, was also found and prosecuted.”
Compounding the seriousness, activists say, is that children are often present.
Land said humans do not have the right to cause animals to suffer “needless pain for frivolous reasons,” because the Bible says in Genesis 9 that God made a covenant “between himself and every living thing.”
“We are to respect every living thing,” Land said.
Earlier statements by Land, however, suggest animal rights are limited. In a radio program in 2002, Land lamented that “an unhatched sea turtle in Florida, an unhatched spotted owl in Oregon and an unhatched snail darter fish in Tennessee have more legal protection under the law than a partially born human being in the United States of America,” according to Baptist Press.
Land said on the July 6, 2002, Richard Land Live radio broadcast that human beings are superior to other species because they are created in the image of God. “Human beings have a soul; cows don’t; apes don’t; dolphins don’t,” he said. “We are the only ones who are created in the image of God.”
While Bible-believing Christians “do not have the right to utterly disrespect an animal and to cause it needless pain or to treat it as if it were an inanimate object,” Land said, a line has to be drawn between animals and humans.
“While we do not have the right to cause needless pain and suffering to animals to create cosmetics, we do have the right to cause pain, while attempting to minimize it, and to cause harm, even the death of animals, in attempts to find cures for diseases that cause suffering and death for humans,” he said.
According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, cockfighting — where two roosters specifically bred for aggressiveness are placed beak to beak in a small ring and encouraged to fight to the death — has been around for centuries.
Roosters were first bred for fighting in Southeast Asia more than 3,000 years ago, and cockfighting spread across Europe before crossing the Atlantic. The “sport” was popular in the American colonies and spread to the South and West Coast. By the 1800s people began to recognize how cruel it was and laws were passed in all 50 states to make it illegal.
While illegal in the United States, cockfighting is still popular and prevalent in many other countries, such as France, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Belgium, Spain, Haiti, Italy and Malaysia. Many countries have well-established arenas with seats or bleachers for spectators surrounding the ring, similar to a wrestling or boxing arena in the U.S. Fights are held throughout the day, with attendees betting on which birds will lose. Parents often bring along their children for what is considered a day of fun for the entire family.
“Although there is growing opposition in these countries, cockfighting is still highly popular to the majority who see it as part of their culture,” says the ASPCA.
The Humane Society of the United States ranks South Carolina No. 48 for animal protection laws, noting that it is one of the few states were cockfighting is still a misdemeanor.
Fighting birds have a unique history in South Carolina. The University of South Carolina’s sports teams are known as the “Gamecocks,” named for a revolutionary war hero that a British general commented “fought like a gamecock.”
While the school’s official colors are garnet and black, some officially licensed merchandise also contains gold, which according to Wikipedia represents spurs historically worn by gamecocks in cockfights.