Essential to the meaningfull existence of rights is the willingness to use/sanction violence against transgressors of those rights.
People who are passionate about, say, womens right's not be raped or children's rights not to be molested do not draw the line at pamphleting rapists and child abusers
Such people may want to keep their own hands clean by not wanting to engage in violence personaly.
They will, and very passionately do, sanction a scale of violence(s) against rapists and child abusers though.
GY is no different to those people except in as much as that he has the same passion for the rights of animals.
CG, this is an interesting post, and it is well in line with you argument (that I fully agree with) that ethically, there is not much difference between eating animal products and raping or murdering humans. However, there are differences.
The first difference, however, is in society's perception of the two - while one is clearly condemned, the other one is still seen as totally acceptable in virtually any country and by about 95 % of the human population. While we can more or less rely on society's punishing people who violate the rights of humans, we can unfortunately also rely on the fact that if we try to use force to stop the violation of animal rights, society will come down hard on us, and that this will even have damaging effects to the peaceful furthering of the belief that animals should get rights at one point in time.
The second difference, however, is also the one between relying on society and taking the rights into our own hands. Yes, most people will not "draw the line on pamphleting against rapists and child abusers", as you eloquently (and also polemically, of course) write.
However, they also should most likely not take the law into their own hands (unless in an emergency, e.g. if they should happen to encounter an attempted rape), but rather let the proper authorities take care of it. There are enough stories of people suspected of a wrongdoing (rightfully or not) who became victims of vigilante justice by enraged fellow citizens.
