Photo Credit: oobly.com

The illustrated map shows the targeted area pushed to alter its legendary name.

Legendary for their contentious style of advocating animal rights, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have proposed to change the name of San Francisco’s famous Tenderloin District to the “Tempeh District,” a switch they deem imperative to eliminate any tolerance of animal cruelty by giving homage to the soy-based meat replacement.

Opting for this change, the organization highlighted the fact that San Francisco is celebrated for some of the best vegan cuisine in the world. Tracy Reiman, vice president of PETA, pleaded that “the city deserves a neighborhood named after delicious cruelty-free food instead of the flesh of an abused animal.”

However, Tenderloin aficionados were quick to refute that the district name had little to do with meat and pointed out that the moniker represented the city’s past reputation as a place where police received “tenderloins,” or bribes, in order to turn a blind eye towards injustice.

“It really referred to areas of vice and corruption,” said Randy Shaw, a housing advocate in the district, who yearns to open a museum devoted to the precarious past of the city. “It wasn’t like they were giving them steaks. They were giving them cash.”

Although PETA spokeswomen, Ashley Gonzalez, put forth that the switch would be “representative of the philosophies” of San Francisco’s famously liberal locals, changing the name of this reputable district seems unnecessary and a trivial step towards promoting a vegetarian lifestyle.

With neither past nor ongoing complaints regarding the district’s name, PETA hits home with another radical proposal that tips far over the line of attention-grabbing activism to attention-grabbing absurdity, tackling another issue that hardly regards animal cruelty.

From PETA’s outburst against animal breeding, in which protestors dressed up as members of the Klu Klux Klan in order to equate dog-breeders with white supremacists, to their attack of Al Gore, claiming his environmental awareness campaigns hypocritical without calling for universal vegetarianism, their farcical aggression towards anything and everything non-vegetarian seems to grow more ridiculous with every passing year.

Although some would refute that the “Tenderloin Case” reinforces PETA’s main mission to promote an animal-friendly lifestyle, the more likely outcome of their efforts would be an increased censorious attitude toward the organization, not to mention their own credibility going to shambles by continuing to stray afar from actual threats to the welfare of animals.

A vegetarian myself, I fully support and encourage this lifestyle. Magnetizing countless individuals through myriad favorable arguments– environmental, health, and moral, to highlight just a few– I understand that although it drew me in, it does not and will never serve the same effect on every single individual. While difficult at first to cope with the relentless disapproval from my family, the constant bickering and ill attention of my friends, and random discussion regarding the stupidity of my diet, it ultimately allowed me to understand that tolerance to both sides is essential.

To engage in a militant style of recruiting people to a vegetarian diet by irately attacking menial issues such as the name of an urban district or focusing dire attention on other people and organizations that don’t correlate identically to the agenda of their own, not only seems appalling, but a violation of the moral treatment of the human race.

As PETA continues to obscure facts in order to attract support, not only do they distract needed attention on impending animal rights violations, but also they sabotage the name of all vegetarians by misrepresenting our generally more tolerant population. With unyielding devotion, I encourage the ethical treatment of animals. However, I’m pretty sure that cows are more focused on avoiding the unfixed horrors of slaughterhouses and factories rather than a district title.