I went online today to look at websites devoted to the efforts by many in New York City – animal rights groups and the new mayor – to ban the horses in Central Park. One sight which called itself “Save The Horses” was a group arguing that the horses are treated inhumanely and that horses have no place in New York in modern times. Another group, which called itself “Saving the Central Park Horses” was fighting the ban, arguing the Central Park horses are a beloved and iconic part of New York and should remain.

Each site has links and arguments that completely contradicted one another, citing many authoritative sources with totally different information. One site said the horses would go to rescue parks and preserves, another said there was not nearly enough money to keep 200 working horses alive with no work. One site said horses had been banned all over the world, another reported they had not.

Politics has also entered the discussion, of course, the new mayor has close ties to many animal rights groups, who supported his campaign with substantial contributions, one of his major donors was a man leading the fight to ban the horses from Central Park, and he has been accused of having ulterior motives – he allegedly is interested in the real estate where the horse stables are. The mayor promised in his inaugural address to get the horses out of New York City, he said there was no argument or discussion to be had, it was a done deal. “Just watch us do it,” promised the mayor.

Some groups say the horses are overworked and mistreated, others say they work comfortable hours, are well-fed and have months off of work. As usual, people are tossing websites and links at one another, individual humans no longer talk directly to one another.

It was a powerful metaphor for me of the crippling and stalemating polarization in the animal world, there is not any consensus on what saving an animal even means.

I don’t use propaganda or combative websites, I have none to offer you or link to, I truck in my opinion, not other people’s. I just say what I feel and I have been clear about my feelings. For me, animal rights mean giving animals more meaningful work to do around people, not less. People and dogs and cats and bicyclists are often injured or killed in New York City, no one is proposing exiling them.

If people are abusing horses, they ought to be punished, if there are too many trucks in the park, they ought to be banned, not the horses. Animals desperately need to be around people, so that we can stay connected to them and care about them. If the horses are banned, many people in New York will go their whole lives without ever seeing an animal. That does not seem healthy to me. Anatole France wrote that “until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”

I have been around animals long enough to know what happens to working animals when they are deprived of their work – it is just a different kind of abuse, the social abuse that comes from projecting human values onto the lives of animals. They will wither and die, perhaps better off being slaughtered than sent to an animal prison disguised as a rescue farm.

Mayors are not dictators, I don’t imagine they have the power to simply ban the horses in Central Park without some process or discussion or argument, I hope not, that would be a sorry beginning for a new mayor who claims to be sensitive and progressive.

There are two sides to this issue, as there are to every issue, and battling websites and angry and polarized people will not persuade anyone who is not already convinced. I was in New York last  week and spend some hours around the horses and their drivers, they looked strong, well-fed and content to me, I saw a lot of affection for them, they were clean and munching on buckets of oats, and I was, as always, struck by how much people loved seeing them and riding in their carriages. I love seeing them, for sure, Central Park would lose so much of its romance without them.

Horses have been pulling carts in busy streets for centuries, I am not clear on why it is now considered cruel and inhumane. The city wants to replace the horses with “vintage electric carts,” I cannot quite imagine who would want to see Central Park in a car, they are everywhere in New York, that has as much romance and atmosphere as a cement block.

We cannot create paradise for animals anymore than we can create nirvanas for people, there are many human beings on the streets of New York who are quite visible who are not nearly as well cared for as these horses appear to be. Don’t we have better things to do?

Perhaps the new mayor and the many groups who claim to be advocates for compassion will take care of them first, or perhaps the next idea will be that New York is too crowded and dangerous for dogs, many people have argued that for years. But many New Yorkers have learned to give their dogs good lives, surely the city could do the same for it’s horses.

I see there are different ideas about what saving the Central Park horses really means, it also means we are losing another opportunity to understand the real lives of real animals in a compassionate way, and to accord them the right to live in our world.