Oh brother. Via the San Diego Union-Tribune:
PETA is stepping up its anti-SeaWorld campaign with a billboard it hopes to place in San Diego featuring an apparently naked man atop a toy orca below the message: “SeaWorld: Where grown men perform sex acts on orcas.”
While it’s unlikely the animal rights group will find a billboard company willing to accept the provocative ad, PETA representatives said Wednesday they’re determined to showcase it in San Diego, even if it means opting for a mobile billboard on a truck.
The latest attention-getting tactic by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is designed to shine a light on what the group claims are abusive captive breeding practices by the marine park. Specifically, PETA asserts that SeaWorld relies on park trainers to masturbate male orcas to obtain their sperm and then insert tubes of semen into the female killer whales to impregnate them.
“If people get a real understanding of what SeaWorld is doing, that their business model relies on sexually assaulting male orcas and forcibly impregnating unwilling females, that’s what they are going to find off-putting, not the billboard,” said Ashley Byrne, a campaign specialist with PETA. “I don’t think there’s a nice way to talk about that.”
Manual semen extraction is hardly uncommon. Ask any zookeeper or farmer. That said, I find it remarkably easy to detest PETA’s histrionics and still hope for the demise of SeaWorld.