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legal rights for vampires
Aug. 20th, 2005 09:33 pmJust finished watching The Siege, the third film in a three pack, the one I hadn't heard of before. From 1998 it posits a series of terrorist attacks on New York and the reactions of FBI, CIA and US Army, as well as politicians and random people. ( Read more... )
So, now I'm having thoughts about season 4 Buffy, the Initiative, the legal situation with those guys. Army operating on US soil, not legal. But, is that only when they're hunting humans? I mean hunting animals would be allowed, yes? So is hunting things that only *look* human quite legal, technically?
The other day on the S3 board I got quite impassioned about civil rights for vampires, that in an ideal world with adequate resources vampires should have the exact same rights as regular humans. Because otherwise you have a situation where someone can look like people but not be counted as people. Where everyone around them is covered by all the laws we've spent thousands of years trying to get right, but this one person in the crowd, who looks just like everyone else, is quite naked of legal protection, because someone decided they don't count as people any more. Demons, vampires, werewolves - if its legal to say 'that isn't a person' and ignore all the rules, when said non-person is walking, talking, tax paying even... Very dangerous precedent.
The UK series Ultraviolet covered this explicitly, never mentioning vampires but mentioning terrorists, talking about the dangers of a shoot to kill policy, or a lack of one.
I like a layer of metaphor between me and reality. But sometimes that layer is really very skinny.
So, now I'm having thoughts about season 4 Buffy, the Initiative, the legal situation with those guys. Army operating on US soil, not legal. But, is that only when they're hunting humans? I mean hunting animals would be allowed, yes? So is hunting things that only *look* human quite legal, technically?
The other day on the S3 board I got quite impassioned about civil rights for vampires, that in an ideal world with adequate resources vampires should have the exact same rights as regular humans. Because otherwise you have a situation where someone can look like people but not be counted as people. Where everyone around them is covered by all the laws we've spent thousands of years trying to get right, but this one person in the crowd, who looks just like everyone else, is quite naked of legal protection, because someone decided they don't count as people any more. Demons, vampires, werewolves - if its legal to say 'that isn't a person' and ignore all the rules, when said non-person is walking, talking, tax paying even... Very dangerous precedent.
The UK series Ultraviolet covered this explicitly, never mentioning vampires but mentioning terrorists, talking about the dangers of a shoot to kill policy, or a lack of one.
I like a layer of metaphor between me and reality. But sometimes that layer is really very skinny.