I got an e-mail this morning seeking a solicitation from an “anti-animal rights group” seeking to block New York City’s very powerful and organized effort to ban the horses in Central Park. I was sorry to get such an e-mail, obviously stirred by my writings about the horses. I consider myself a passionate advocate for animal rights and am sorry to see the term so exploited and distorted. Is one against “animal rights” if they feel the horses should not be banned from New York” Or in favor of them if they are sent away?

In this painful and complex issue, everyone claims to be speaking for the Central Park Horses and everyone sees themselves as defending their rights. This is understandable, in our polarized world we all see ourselves as defending virtue, and we see people who disagree with us as having only based and distorted motives.

I completely accept that the vast array of interests – “animal rights” organizations, the SPCA, the Mayor, the City Council President – seeking to ban the horses from New York City, mostly on humanitarian grounds – are honest and sincere in their beliefs, but I also see that this issue dense and complicated and speaks to the most fundamental questions about the ways in which we view animals, the rights of animals, the very idea of what animal rights mean.

“It’s over,” said Mayor de Blasio, the city’s new mayor at his inauguration, he said banning the horses would be one of the first priorities of his new administration, ahead of almost any other concern.

Melissa Mar-Viverito, The New York City Council President said in the New York Times that it was “long past time we end these practices which treat the horses so cruelly”

Edita Birnkrant, the New York director of Friends Of Animals, told the Times the horses working conditions are akin to being in prison.  “They are shackled into their carriages, pulling through streets of a chaotic unnatural environment and go back to their cells,” she said. “They need the ability to graze and roam freely. They never get that in New York. They live a life of total confinement, day after day.”

Why do I get the feeling these politicians are living completely within their own bubble, like the people at Fox News or MSNBC, speaking only to themselves, creating their own reality? This kind of rhetoric is troubling to me, it suggests  little understanding of the lives, needs – or rights, for that matter – of real animals, as opposed to urban people who are utterly disconnected from the world of animals, it seems an inevitable outcome of the epidemic politicizing and  emotionalizing of animals in America, and the great schism between people who have pets and people who understand animals. Very few horses graze freely in America any longer, and many of those who do lead very hard lives.

Animals cannot live in the world the way they used to, they desperately need people to bring them closer into the modern world of human being, not cling to emotionalized and very human ideas of what an animal need. We need to understand what is really in their best interests in terms of rights and lives, not what makes us feel better about ourselves when it comes to defining their lives. What a wonderful opportunity – lost already, it seems – to use the Central Park Horses as a paradigm for a new and compassionate understanding of the lives of animals in our world.

Here, there is the chance to make sure they are treated well and properly cared for, to make room for them even in a crowded urban area. To respect the fact that people all over the world and the country love to see them and ride in their carriages. There is the lost opportunity to expand their roles and presence in our lives so they will survive as a species and have a role to play in our distracted and de-humanized world.

We are doing it for dogs and cats, why only for dogs? Nobody thinks it cruel for dogs to live in condos in mid-town Manhattan. If our definition of rights for horses means they all must be roaming freely in the wild, then there will soon enough be no horses in our world. If we equate stalls with prisons, we are accepting the most ignorant and narrow understanding of what it is to be a contented and healthy animal. It is especially disappointing when a mayor unthinkingly embraces this myopic view of what it means to have rights as an animal.

Pulling carts through city streets is the ancient work of many kinds of horses, and is still their work all over the world, the wild is not a friendly place for many animals, including horses, and stalls are not prisons, my donkeys are safe in comfortable in theirs, they have good food, warmth and shelter. Dogs in New York City do not live very different lives than  horses, no dog was intended to live in an apartment all day long and never run free, and many are abused and killed in traffic, yet I doubt animal rights groups in the city – surely not the mayor or City Council President – would advocate their being banned from the city and set free in the wild. And where, exactly, would this “wild” world be? Wal-Mart aims to build a store every 30 miles across America, no one is stopping them to make room for wild animals.

I have no doubt  – nor do most people who know equines – that most of these working horses would end up dead or dispirited on the so-called “animal rescue” preserves supposedly waiting for them, for a working animal, it just sounds like a different kind of prison. I’ve seen these horses many times, I just do not accept they live cruel lives of abuse and mistreatment, they are much-loved and admired every day of their lives.

Some of the horses have been overworked or neglected, just as many pets are mistreated,  but the New York City police monitors department monitors their treatment daily, and only one in the past several years has been found to be abused, the handler arrested.  I suspect many more children are mistreated in New York than horses, I wonder why the city government isn’t making their treatment an urgent priority?I like the idea of arresting abusers rather than banning animals from our midst, in some ways it reminds me of the great Pit Bull debate – perhaps ban the people who abuse Pit Bulls instead of the dogs they mistreat and misuse?

There are two sides to everything, of course, I find the rhetoric of the people banning the horses to be off, it seems strident, narrow, ideological rather than grounded in the real lives and truth of real animals.

It doesn’t seem thoughtful to me, or considered, it seems knee-jerk and reflexive. I believe in animal rights, I believe animals working with people have purpose, meaning and great health in their lives, I live with working animals every day.  They need to work, the fortunate ones get to work with people. Stalls are not cruel, the wild is not paradise, animals do not live in a no-kill world any more than people and pets do. Anybody who lives in New York accepts a certain  measure of confinement and restriction, the Central Park horses get exercise, attention, food and supervision. We can’t say as much for most of the horses in the world, there are very few countries where the treatment of these horses would be considered cruel.

The Central Park horses are a fascinating metaphor for me, I do wonder who gets to speak for them, I wonder why political leaders take such absolute positions without any acknowledgement or recognition that the rights of animals, like the rights of people, are not simple things to define, understand or advance. They are not like us, their needs are not ours, their conscientiousness is not ours.  I wonder at almost anyone who sees the world only in black or white, right or life. The world is filled with hues of gray for me, I know of no idea that lives within the boundaries of black or white, I feel for the poor Central Park Horses caught in the middle, it seems so clear to me they are mostly being given the right to disappear from our midst and perish, yet more animals exploited so that people can find ways to feel better about themselves.