by Colin Newman
Much ballyhoo and bedlam has accompanied the recent, nearly inexplicable push to repeal the ban on slaughtering horses for meat in Oklahoma. Despite polls showing that the majority of Oklahomans oppose the repeal, Mary Fallin has chosen to expend valuable political capital on making sure that Oklahoma is a good spot to find meat for your horse kabobs. In light of this development, I think it’s high time that we consult those most directly effected by this policy: the horses themselves. There are more horses than humans in Oklahoma [citation needed] and who can say as we look back at the past few years of Fallin’s administration that our state would not be better off if horses could vote?
It is in this spirit that I propose a new legislative push for Horse Personhood.
You may ask: “Is this massive 600lb horse really a ‘person’ who is guaranteed the right to not be turned into glue?” In other words, should horses be protected in law as persons; as citizens upon whom full constitutional protections (due process, equal protection, the right to vote etc.) should confer? The answer is yes
We must move quickly to declare horses as people, and once that is accomplished, we must begin registering them to vote. Larger forms will be needed to accommodate hoofprints instead of signatures, and special horse accessible voting booths will have to be set up in areas of high horse density. I cannot say how these horses will vote; as a Democrat I hope they vote in support of their own rational interest, but that hasn’t worked well with humans recently. Some might argue that, in the absence of universal horse education, horses are not intellectually gifted enough to be trusted with the franchise. I think this is self evidently untrue.
Our lawmakers, who we elect to represent and rule us, are clearly the best specimens of human intellect we can put forward. Given that there is more brain power in the average Oklahoma stable than in our entire state government, we can only imagine how much progress we could make with a majority horse legislature. Building thousands of hoof activated carrot dispensers and horse only lanes on city streets will create thousands of jobs. Riding horses is more “green†than fossil fuel, and produces useful fertilizer. Weekend high stakes human races will help our booming gambling industry. Horse grooming and horse fashion will take off and attract the young/creative class/millennial/urban dream creators (read: yuppies) that we desperately seek to fill our dilapidated warehouse lofts. Speaking of which, hip urban horse lofts! I’m just spitballing here.
With these opportunities and more staring us in the face, is selling literal oil tankers stuffed to overflowing with bloated horse carcasses [citation needed] to the people of Kazakhstan more important than the will of the people of Oklahoma? Is corporate agribusiness so powerful in this state that their voices count so much more than that of the voters of Oklahoma?
Just Say Neigh.
If you would like some propaganda, we made some. We suggest you fax these to the governor. On an unrelated note, there’s a way you can tape multiple sheets of paper together and feed them through a fax machine in an endless loop. Just sayin.
