First the Catholics complained about PETA's latest ad featuring Playboy's Joanna Krupa floating nude as a holy angel barely covered with a cross in the antifur group's "Be an Angel for Animals" campaign. Now the Anti-Defamation League also has assailed the ad as offensive.
"As an organization dedicated to fighting prejudice and bigotry, we believe this ad campaign can be offensive to people of faith, particularly Catholics who consider the objects portrayed in the ads as sacred. We find it ironic that an organization dedicated to ethical treatment of animals can have such a low standard of ethics when it comes to respect for fellow humans," wrote ADL National Director Abraham Foxman to PETA.
Now People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has responded, and it provided both letters to Whispers. PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich says he welcomes the criticism, mostly because it helps make the case that the controversial ad campaign gets people talking about his organization's animal rights issues. What's more, he suggested that the group is following in the footsteps of Jesus.
"We are not the first to walk this road: Jesus himself defied the conventions of his day and outraged local religious and government leaders in order to ensure that his message of compassion was heard," responded Friedrich, who described himself as a devout Catholic. "I'm convinced that when iconography is used in an effort to make the world kinder and more just, it is fulfilling the highest goal of humanity: to strive to enact God's vision of justice and peace on Earth."
But comparing the ad campaign featuring a nude Playboy model to Jesus? "She is doing God's work of making the world a more compassionate place, no question," he says.
Read the letters here:
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