But thanks to a dedicated group of individuals who decided this tiger has served enough time under the ownership of Michael Sandlin, people around the world are fighting for Tony’s freedom. More than 10,000 members of the Change.org community have asked the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to deny Tiger Truck Stop’s permit when it comes up for renewal in December. Without the permit, authorities can remove Tony and place him in an accredited sanctuary, like Big Cat Rescue in Florida.

Now the Animal Legal Defense Fund has stepped in and filed a legal petition on Tony’s behalf. ALDF is asking the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to revoke and deny renewal of Michael Sandlin’s permit to keep Tony. They’re arguing that the permit is in violation of state law, in violation of Iberville Parish ordinances, and that LDWF’s granting of the current permit was unlawful.

Those three strikes come after a long history of problems at the truck stop, including Animal Welfare Act violations in 2003 that resulted in the seizure of three other tigers who belonged to Sandlin. Years later, Tony’s world is still pitiful, lacking the space, enrichment and peace that tigers need to thrive.

“Mr. Sandlin’s failure to keep Tony in an environment that is responsive to both his physical and psychological needs is not only inhumane — it is illegal” says ALDF Executive Director Stephen Wells. The organization is calling on the state of Louisiana “to end his daily torment by refusing to sentence him to another year of diesel fumes, harassment, and the unimaginable suffering of life in his lonely cage.”

Time is running out. Tony has spent nearly a decade pacing around his enclosure, a neurotic behavior indicative of psychological stress. The concrete surface puts physical stress on him, too, leaving him at risk for developing painful conditions. Sandlin has to file a permit by December 31st, which means the window for rejecting the permit is closing in fast.

According to WBRZ, Sandlin claims he’ll send Tony to a sanctuary … someday. But not yet; he’s going to wait until the tiger is too old or sick to stay at the Truck Stop. It’s unconscionable to exploit Tony until he’s visibly suffering too much to continue serving as a roadside attraction. He deserves to live his life now, and hopefully the combination of legal pressure and public outcry will save him.

Photo credit: Big Cat Rescue

Animal Legal Defense Fund Files for Tony the Tiger’s Freedom

In the movie, transgender teen Brandon Teena lives his life as a man, until locals discover that he was born female. The movie is a great commentary on what it’s like for transgender people, especially those living in towns that aren’t necessarily accepting.

Netflix, though, doesn’t seem to understand that the movie is about a transgender person. Their description of the movie is highly inaccurate and offensive. They refer to Brandon Teena using female pronouns and say that he “passes herself off as a boy… until the truth is revealed.” The description also says that the character shows “one woman’s voyage of self-discovery.”

“Boys Don’t Cry” is a movie about a transgender man, not a woman. The character should be referred to using male pronouns, because that was his preference. The notion that Teena was passing herself off as a boy but was truthfully a girl is particularly harmful to transgender people. The truth is that Teena was a boy and was expressing himself honestly, and to suggest otherwise is to say that being transgender isn’t legitimate. Furthermore, the movie isn’t about a woman’s voyage, it’s about a transgender man’s voyage, and how difficult it is for transgender men to live in a society that doesn’t understand and is disrespectful of transgender people.

Please ask Netflix to change their description of “Boys Don’t Cry” to accurately explain the movie’s storyline. The movie’s summary should show respect for the character’s transgender identity and should refer to him using male pronouns.

Photo credit: hinnosaar

Netflix Fails at Describing “Boys Don’t Cry”

1. College: Nothing in the world beats suffocating parents and intolerant high school mates than a good dose of college freedom. It’s miraculous how in a matter of literally minutes you can go from total dependence to utter freedom. You can shed everything that you don’t like about your life when you walk through that campus entrance and create a safe, like-minded environment with friends, potential lovers, and even classes that suit your little gay heart. College is the ultimate equalizer and if you can only hang on until then, things can instantaneously get better the moment you lay those extra long twin fitted sheets on your dormitory bed. (Not to mention that in college, I got laid a lot and had the best time of my life).

2. Graduate school: I know, sounds like a dorky second choice, but for me, graduate school was the most enriching experience of my life. This was a time in my life when I pushed my brain (and my time management skills) to the max. I also made lifelong friends with some pretty amazing artists and anarchists and intellectuals. I made connections that would help me in my career in media and that I still hold on to and value today. Plus, I got to attend the high-brow, snooty academic cocktail parties, where I sipped red wine and talked about the state of society and how dreadfully wrong everything and everyone was. Plus, those parties always had awesome cheese spreads.

3. Love: I Loved. And I lost. And I loved again, and lost again. But what did that famous, insightful writer once say, “Better to have had your heart ripped out of your chest and stamped on with a stiletto than never to have had that sloppy make-out session in the bathroom of the gay bar at all.” I paraphrase, but I would not for a second trade all of the loving and losing I experienced since high school. Sure, the relationships I’ve been in weren’t all perfect — hell, none of them were — but they were all worth it.

4. Finding the one: At least I hope she’s the one, but after all the hemming and hawing with all those others that were not the one, I found someone who I want to walk through the world alongside. I don’t know if marriage or kids or anything traditional is in the equation, but it feels like a true arrival to have found someone who I can share everything with, a culmination of all the other bad dates, dysfunctional relationships, and plain-ole good times I had prior, that I never would have experienced had I ended it all before it even started.

5. Seeing the world: If I never lived past high school, I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the warm crispiness of a croissant fresh out of the oven on a cool morning in Paris. I never would have stood on the top of a mountain after a six-hour hike in the Tyrol in Austria. I never would have seen fish the size of myself while snorkeling in Barbados, Mexico, the Virgin Islands. I never would have had the sweet juices from a fresh mango drip down on chin in Copacabana, Brazil. I never would have worn a funny hat in Canada, smoked some dope in Amsterdam, or sung “Sound of Music” cheesiness at the Von Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont, to name just a few. Travel has ripped my mind off the hinges and created some all-important perspective. I hope to live long enough to see a great deal more of the world.

6. Independence: The coolest thing about getting out of high school and growing up is that you actually get to do all those things you wanted to do but weren’t allowed to when you were younger. You can stay up as late as you want, eat ice cream for breakfast, party like it’s 1999, wear that outfit your mother hated, etc. It’s likely that you’ll (hopefully) realize at some point that it’s probably best to do laundry, get a full night’s sleep, and eat vegetables from time to time, but the point is that you have the authority over your own life and the freedom to make decisions as they best suit your wants and needs.

7. Epiphanies: I live for these moments; those rare, invaluable times when a life-changing conclusion enters into your consciousness; like the first time I realized I was gay and it was OK. The first time I really understood that life always marches on. When Plato’s cave parable finally made sense. When I learned that I had ultimate control of my body. Breaking habits. I look forward to getting older and learning even more truths about myself and the world around me.

8. Making a Difference: Whether it’s writing about marginalized people to bring awareness to a cause, dropping a dollar into the homeless man’s cup on the street, or been just being on the other end of the phone for a friend in need, making a difference in someone else’s life has made me feel more alive and it’s something I would never have realized in my adolescence

9. Fulfilling potential: I’ve wanted to be a writer since as early as I can remember. I wrote bad poetry at age seven and an even more insipid book when I was double that age, but I always held onto that dream. While I’m still relatively young and have much potential yet to fulfill, I have gotten closer and closer to that dream with every step I’ve take in life. I wrote for my high school paper and then my college one. I then started to freelance for some cool publications and now am happy to report that I write for a living – and some pretty fun writing at that. One day I hope to be able to write even more leisurely and with even wider reach (from my beach house with no alarm clocks), but things are pretty sweet and I’m living the life that at age 14, 15, and 16 I had only dreamt about.

10. Feeling confident: The older I get, the more confident I am. I enjoy things more deeply because I know myself more intimately. I understand my mind, body, and spirit better. Since high school, I’ve greatly developed my likes and dislikes and, as a result, everything from dinner and social activities, to the company I keep to sex are astronomically better than they were then.

*A little bonus list of below of the top 10 things I never would have enjoyed had I not made it past high school:

10. The Caribbean
9. Filet mignon
8. Living on my own
7. Dirty martinis
6. High tea at the Russian Tea Room
5. My cat
4. Aurora borealis
3. My family
2. My G-spot
1. Becoming an adult!

Photo credit: yoppy

Top Ten Things That Never Would Have Happened If I Didn’t Make It Past High School

Honey, of course, comes from bees. Though not the cuddliest members of the animal kingdom, they’re still animals (although the vegan community is divided on the question of eating honey). Whether you’re an omnivore or on the anti-honey side of the vegan debate, unless you eat a strictly local diet, commercial beekeeping plays a role in your life.

The “liquid gold” only accounts for a small percentage of the bee economy; in the U.S., honeybees are primarily used to cultivate plant production, including fruit, vegetables and nuts. You may imagine bees freely coming and going from hives, pollinating nearby crops and keeping ecosystems healthy. On a local level, that’s true. But in a world of concentrated animal feeding operations and genetically modified crops, Big Ag has managed to make the poor little honeybee just another cog in the factory farm system.

Beekeepers who want to squeeze as much profit as possible from their colonies don’t want to share the sweet stuff, but if they take all the honey, what will their bees eat to keep producing more? So, they pull a bait-and-switch, taking the honey and replacing it with sugar water or high fructose corn syrup.

If you thought high fructose corn syrup was bad for humans, there’s evidence that it’s just as bad (or worse) for bees. Last year, a study found that, in warm temperatures, high fructose corn syrup can form a substance that’s deadly to bees. Some researchers believe this contributes to Colony Collapse Disorder, the mystery disease that’s killed off at least one-third of America’s honeybee population. But it’s cheap. And like any other factory farm, the opportunity to cut corners gets commercial beekeepers buzzing.

In addition to the health issues, it’s pretty unethical to hog the honey and replace it with an unnatural food. In an interview with Grace Pundyk, author of the The Honey Trail, NPR’s Diane Rehm summed up the practice as going in after the insects have done the hard work, and “taking all the honey from the nest and then force-feeding these bees something else so they’ll continue to produce for us.” It would be like swooping in on a small farm at harvest time, stealing all their veggies and leaving them to subsist on a basket of potato chips.

Besides the honey theft, bees are rarely left in peace. They spend a good half the year on truck beds, being shipped around the country to pollinate whatever is in season. You know the issues surrounding livestock trucks, like the stress of travel and deadly highway traffic accidents? Same goes for bees. Earlier this year, a truck carrying about 17 million bees crashed, causing chaos on the interstate in Minnesota.

Like any other factory farmed animal, bees are pumped full of antibiotics and pesticides to minimize nature’s ability to get in the way of agriculture. When honey is harvested, it’s not exactly a scene from Winnie the Pooh. Bees are typically gassed so they (and their stingers) are incapacitated during collection. When the colony has run its course, the hives are often left out in the cold.

Since there’s no viable large-scale alternative to bee pollination, what can you do to take the sting out of agriculture? Buy local. Smaller family farms are less likely to hire hives trucked in from the other side of the country (and you can always visit your local farmers market and ask). If you eat honey, find a local beekeeper who keeps high fructose corn syrup out of his colonies. There are environmental and health benefits to supporting local honey.

So make a resolution to help bees and have a sweet year.

Photo credit: BotheredbyBees

The Not-So-Sweet Side of Honey

All Kickstart participants receive a free daily diet plan in your inbox every morning, complete with recipes, tips and video messages from doctors and nutritionists. The Kickstart menu is based on the Power Plate, the PCRM’s vegan alternative to the USDA food pyramid. The Power Plate is divided into four recommended food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes.

Anyone can try a vegan diet for a three weeks, remember when Oprah did? The Vegan Kickstart website explains: “Whether you are transitioning from a vegetarian to a vegan diet, changing your lifestyle because of diabetes or heart disease, or just want to lose some extra weight, you will notice some amazing improvement in your health.”

Each day of the Vegan Kickstart has a celebrity leader to guide you. Today’s leader is Alicia Silverstone, actress and long-time vegan. She shares her recipe for “Crocodile Crunch,” a dessert from her cookbook The Kind Diet. She also offers some tips on sticking with a plant based diet, including this gem: “If you fall off the wagon, just get back on—no drama, no guilt.”

Ginnifer Goodwin is another vegan celebrity leader. The Big Love actress writes: “It doesn’t take more than a sprinkling of knowledge about factory farming to drive your commitment and to make it impossible to rationalize supporting the industry. Educate yourself! Eliminating cruelty from your life is not only easy, but also very practical and reasonable.”

The 21-day Vegan Kickstart is a great way to try out a cruelty-free diet, and see how easy it is to thrive without animal products. And even if you’ve been practicing veganism for a while, as I have, it’s a great opportunity to recommit to healthy eating. There are days when I bake vegan cupcakes when I should be steaming broccoli, and so I welcome the chance for a healthy vegan menu to be planned out for me.

If the 21-day Vegan Kickstart sounds interesting to you, sign up for a diet plan. There’s still plenty of room on the bandwagon.

Photo Credit: Geishaboy500

Physican’s Committee for Responsible Medicine Launches 21-Day Vegan Kickstart

Most of the 100 victims-turned-traffickers were trafficked from Burma into China and Thailand for forced labor, forced prostitution, or forced marriage. Once discovered, they were shipped back to Burma, sometimes deported, and usually with no compensation. Back in Burma, there were no support services for them, no money for counseling or job training, no help with medical bills or education. The lack of support for victims traps them in a vicious cycle. Some people end up trafficked again and again because they cannot break out of that cycle. Others eventually break the cycle, by becoming traffickers themselves.

Victims can turn into traffickers for a number of reasons. For those trafficked as children, there may be no other conceivable industry for them to enter other than the one they were sold into as a child, whether that’s commercial sex, brick making, or domestic service. So as an adult, they follow the only career path they’ve known and recruit other children into the same industry. Others many find that the only model of power in their life is the person who owns and controls them — their trafficker. When they look around for ways to empower themselves, becoming a subjugater of others is all they see. Still others, as is the case with many of the 100 Burmese nationals, may not even realize what they’re engaging in is against the law. They know the trafficking routes, brokers, and bosses from the time they were forced to work. That they should recruit others to do the same thing might feel like the natural extension of their previous “job.”

The victim-turned-trafficker paradigm is particularly common among children forced into prostitution. Many of them develop such a close relationship with and dependency on their pimp, that once they’re adults they’ll help him lure other young girls into prostitution. It’s a cycle that can continue uninterrupted for generations, with older women recruiting younger girls because mentally, they’re still young and vulnerable themselves.

Of course, even trafficking victims have personal responsibility, and choosing to enslave other people is never acceptable for anyone. But having been a trafficking victim, especially having grown up as one, is a highly mitigating circumstance. People for whom slavery has been a daily norm may not immediately see their life as possible without it. And this cyclical effect of victims becoming traffickers and creating more victims is just one more way the global industry of human trafficking is a nefarious one.

Photo credit: dany13

When Victims Become Traffickers

Most of the 100 victims-turned-traffickers were trafficked from Burma into China and Thailand for forced labor, forced prostitution, or forced marriage. Once discovered, they were shipped back to Burma, sometimes deported, and usually with no compensation. Back in Burma, there were no support services for them, no money for counseling or job training, no help with medical bills or education. The lack of support for victims traps them in a vicious cycle. Some people end up trafficked again and again because they cannot break out of that cycle. Others eventually break the cycle, by becoming traffickers themselves.

Victims can turn into traffickers for a number of reasons. For those trafficked as children, there may be no other conceivable industry for them to enter other than the one they were sold into as a child, whether that’s commercial sex, brick making, or domestic service. So as an adult, they follow the only career path they’ve known and recruit other children into the same industry. Others many find that the only model of power in their life is the person who owns and controls them — their trafficker. When they look around for ways to empower themselves, becoming a subjugater of others is all they see. Still others, as is the case with many of the 100 Burmese nationals, may not even realize what they’re engaging in is against the law. They know the trafficking routes, brokers, and bosses from the time they were forced to work. That they should recruit others to do the same thing might feel like the natural extension of their previous “job.”

The victim-turned-trafficker paradigm is particularly common among children forced into prostitution. Many of them develop such a close relationship with and dependency on their pimp, that once they’re adults they’ll help him lure other young girls into prostitution. It’s a cycle that can continue uninterrupted for generations, with older women recruiting younger girls because mentally, they’re still young and vulnerable themselves.

Of course, even trafficking victims have personal responsibility, and choosing to enslave other people is never acceptable for anyone. But having been a trafficking victim, especially having grown up as one, is a highly mitigating circumstance. People for whom slavery has been a daily norm may not immediately see their life as possible without it. And this cyclical effect of victims becoming traffickers and creating more victims is just one more way the global industry of human trafficking is a nefarious one.

Photo credit: dany13

When Victims Become Traffickers

Most of the 100 victims-turned-traffickers were trafficked from Burma into China and Thailand for forced labor, forced prostitution, or forced marriage. Once discovered, they were shipped back to Burma, sometimes deported, and usually with no compensation. Back in Burma, there were no support services for them, no money for counseling or job training, no help with medical bills or education. The lack of support for victims traps them in a vicious cycle. Some people end up trafficked again and again because they cannot break out of that cycle. Others eventually break the cycle, by becoming traffickers themselves.

Victims can turn into traffickers for a number of reasons. For those trafficked as children, there may be no other conceivable industry for them to enter other than the one they were sold into as a child, whether that’s commercial sex, brick making, or domestic service. So as an adult, they follow the only career path they’ve known and recruit other children into the same industry. Others many find that the only model of power in their life is the person who owns and controls them — their trafficker. When they look around for ways to empower themselves, becoming a subjugater of others is all they see. Still others, as is the case with many of the 100 Burmese nationals, may not even realize what they’re engaging in is against the law. They know the trafficking routes, brokers, and bosses from the time they were forced to work. That they should recruit others to do the same thing might feel like the natural extension of their previous “job.”

The victim-turned-trafficker paradigm is particularly common among children forced into prostitution. Many of them develop such a close relationship with and dependency on their pimp, that once they’re adults they’ll help him lure other young girls into prostitution. It’s a cycle that can continue uninterrupted for generations, with older women recruiting younger girls because mentally, they’re still young and vulnerable themselves.

Of course, even trafficking victims have personal responsibility, and choosing to enslave other people is never acceptable for anyone. But having been a trafficking victim, especially having grown up as one, is a highly mitigating circumstance. People for whom slavery has been a daily norm may not immediately see their life as possible without it. And this cyclical effect of victims becoming traffickers and creating more victims is just one more way the global industry of human trafficking is a nefarious one.

Photo credit: dany13

When Victims Become Traffickers

As a wild animal, the “coyote” couldn’t be kept at the shelter, so they called the police department to pick her up. At least one police officer had doubts about their assessment, but not being the animal professionals in this story, the department took the humane society at their word. They called up a wildlife expert for advice and were told that coyotes should be returned to the wild or killed.

One of the officers had taken a photo of the “coyote” before setting her loose behind a home improvement store, and the picture ending up matching the Lost Dog posters for Cooper, Lori Goodlett’s 11-year-old purebred Shiba Inu, who had escaped from her yard earlier this month.

A study of adopted dogs by Dr. Victoria Voith, found that animal shelter workers were wrong in guessing the heritage of mixed breed dogs 87.5 percent of the time. For your average adopter, that doesn’t matter — every dog is an individual, so you might as well appreciate your mutt for his own personality. But in areas where there is breed specific legislation, a dog mistakenly labeled a “pit bull” could lose his life … and with over 20 breeds that are commonly mistaken for “pit bulls,” it’s no wonder that breed specific legislation fails. But, in the case of the Frankfort Humane Society, this learning curve could mean your pet dog is mistaken for a wild animal.

As someone with a dog who is often mistaken for a wolf or coyote, this calamity hits home. But with poor Cooper, the resemblance wasn’t even close. Cooper is registered with the American Kennel Club. According to the AKC’s breed standard, the Shiba Inu is a compact little dog, with an average adult weight between 17-23 pounds. Their coloring is reddish with a lighter undercoat or distinct black and tan. Their muzzles are “firm, full and round” and their tails curl over their backs.

Now for the coyotes. According to a publication on coyote management in Kentucky, adult coyotes typically weigh between 29-33 pounds; although they can be a little smaller, their body structure tends to be on the rangy side. They typically have light grey coats with black-tipped fur along their back and tail. They have a “slender snout” and “a bottle-shaped tail carried at a downward angle.”

In other words, aside from being canines with erect ears, these animals have very little in common — they don’t share the same body structure, coloring, muzzles or tails. It’s not even close. Maybe these characteristics would be confusing if you don’t spend much time around dogs, but when you work at a shelter, these differences should be obvious. It’s not like not knowing the difference between similar-looking breeds like huskies and malamutes, or some of the various hound dogs; this is a serious breed identification fail.

And, considering Cooper peacefully cooperated with the officers, you’d think her domestic-dog-like behavior would be enough to give shelter workers pause before crying “coyote.”

Instead, this 11-year-old companion animal was released to fend for herself in the wild, where I can only assume there are actual coyotes. I guess the only good thing is that the police opted to let the “coyote” go, instead of putting her down. At least there’s some chance that the search party of volunteers and police will find Cooper and reunite her with her family.

Photo credit: Living in Monrovia

Stray Dog Mistaken for Coyote Gets Released into the Wild