Dialogue between grown ups

To get a good dialogue going it needs ground rules. Before we can be taken seriously our adversaries need to be sure that we’re fair minded, enough to give them a chance to say their piece, after which they’ll let us, or be obliged to let us, say our piece.
If there’s any personal disapproval in the air it will get in the way. By keeping our arguments away from the personal we’ll be able to show we aren’t afraid of opposition and then we can make space for debate to take place. And if we ever get to debate this subject properly, then we’ll have achieved a lot for animal rights. This issue of animal rights is potentially explosive. It’s confronting. But, for vegans and animal advocates, it’s exciting too, since it deals with potentials and break throughs. For us (and of course potentially for anyone else) it’s liberating and profoundly inspiring. For us a debate is something to value. It’s our chance to state our case. It’s another matter entirely for meat eaters. For them debate is more difficult because they don’t have so much to back up their case.
But for quite different reasons, debate is not easy for vegans either, because they have a lot of bottled up anger that needs to be kept under control. If we were more mature as people, then both meat-eaters and vegans alike would be able to communicate better. But we aren’t. And since vegans are the ones who want the dialogue to take place, it’s our job to take the initiative; to act like grown ups and set the standard of behaviour.