Norm Phelps

Norm Phelps
Born May 16, 1939
USA
Died December 31, 2014(2014-12-31) (aged 75)
Meritus Medical Center, Hagerstown, Maryland, USA
Resting place Maryland
Occupation Author, animal advocate
Citizenship United States
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]
Relatives Nelson (son) and Kyra (daughter)
Website
www.animalsandethics.org

Norm Phelps (born Norman Nelson Phelps, III) (May 16, 1939 – December 31, 2014)[2] was an American writer. He was a founding member of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV),[3] and a former outreach director of the Fund for Animals.[4] He authored three books on animal rights: The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible (2002), The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights (2004), and The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA (2007).

Phelps spoke at numerous conferences, including the National Conference on Organized Resistance, the University of Oregon’s Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, several of the annual Animal Rights Conferences sponsored by the Farm 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,[5] Philosophia, Satya, The Animals’ Voice, and VegNews.

Phelps had become a vegetarian and then a vegan following the death of his dog Czar in 1984. As Phelps describes this change process on his website, "Czar was a person. He had a personality as individual and well-defined as any human 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 about cows, pigs, chickens and sheep? 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 in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he became active in the campaign to end the live pigeon shoot which was then held every Labor Day in the village of Hegins, Pennsylvania. (The shoot ended in 1998.) When The Fund for Animals merged with The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Phelps joined the staff of the HSUS wildlife protection campaign, where he worked until he resigned for reasons of age and health in 2011. (From 2002 until his death, Phelps had suffered from myasthenia gravis, an auto-immune neuromuscular condition that causes severe fatiguable 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 of battery 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 in Funkstown, Maryland (USA) with his second wife, Patti Rogers. He is survived by his 2 children, his son Nelson and his daughter Kyra.

Education

Publications

Books

Articles

Audio podcasts

Published Interviews

Book Reviews

Video lectures

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Biography at animalsandethics.org
  2. ↑ Norm Phelps – 1939-2014, Compassion Over Killing
  3. ↑ Website of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians
  4. ↑ Phelps, Norm (2007). The Longest Struggle. Lantern Books.
  5. ↑ Phelps, Norm (2008). "Rhyme, Reason, and Animal Rights", Journal for Critical Animal Studies, vol 6, issue 1
  6. ↑ LinkedIn profile, Norm Phelps

Further reading


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