11/04/03

LC031104


Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Apes and humans have a lot in common. Some say these primates
should also share some basic human rights.

Craig Stanford>> I feel that we can't ethically in good
conscience do the things to them that we do to them and continue
to call ourselves modern, open-minded, caring people.

Val>> And then, we take you to the sunny side of the street
where an innovative musician is turning sunshine into song.

These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Hello, I'm Val Zavala reporting from the Los Angeles Zoo.
We're here to look at a topic that crosses the line between
science and religion and that is the similarity between humans
and apes. If you look at our DNA, it proves that we are
biological cousins, but did you ever think about extending human
rights to apes and monkeys? It may sound a little far-fetched,
but an effort to do just that has started in California. Saul
Gonzalez first covered this story for Religion and Ethics News
Weekly. He explains how science is taking a new look at these
highly intelligent animals.

Saul Gonzalez>> Human beings. Many of us believe our intellect
and reason put us head and shoulders above the rest of the
animal kingdom. However, do people too often exaggerate their
distinctiveness? Especially when we compare ourselves to our
closest evolutionary kin, the great apes? They are primates
like chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans which, according to
recent genetic studies, share between ninety-seven and ninety-
nine percent of their DNA with human beings.

Craig Stanford>> We are great apes, they are us. There is
enough of them in us and enough of us in them that you would not
draw this bold line.

Saul Gonzalez>> Craig Stanford, chair of the Anthropology
Department at the University of Southern California, is one of
the country's leading experts on great ape behavior. He says
his African field research with chimpanzee and gorilla
communities has convinced him of the close parallels between
great ape and human societies. A case in point? How leaders
climb to the top.

Craig Stanford>> Male chimps rise through the dominance
hierarchy not by being big, not by being strong, but by being
clever, by knowing exactly who to network with, by knowing
exactly who's favor to curry. In that way, of course, they're
strikingly reminiscent of what people do. We look at people in
Congress. You don't need to be six foot five to be a successful
politician. You just need to be socially, politically, really
shrewd and it's exactly the same for chimps and also for other
great apes.

Saul Gonzalez>> In anthropology circles, Stanford is best known
for his assertion that great apes are so smart that there is
virtually no difference between them and young human children.

Craig Stanford>> The fact is that, if you compared a human
child, a one and a half or two or two and a half year old child,
with an adult chimp, what you'd find is that in many ways,
neurologically, intellectually, emotionally, cognitively,
they're very similar. In some ways, the chimp is dramatically
smarter. It can navigate its way through a very complicated
rainforest. If you put the two, a child and a chimp, on the
same psychological battery of tests in the laboratory somewhere,
what you'd find is some very striking similarities.

Saul Gonzalez>> In fact, so much so that a community of animal
welfare activists, scientists and legal scholars are championing
a provocative idea on behalf of the great apes. Their argument
is this: if primates like gorillas and chimpanzees have so much
in common with people, biologically, intellectually and
emotionally, then humanity has a special moral duty. It must
surrender its monopoly on certain human rights and liberties and
begin offering them to the great apes.

Craig Stanford>> I feel that we can't ethically in good
conscience do the things to them that we do to them and continue
to call ourselves modern, open-minded, caring people. I think
the goal right now for great apes is to raise their critical
status to the absolute highest level.

Saul Gonzalez>> Animal rights activists say that means
extending to great apes the right to life, protection of
individual liberty and the prohibition of torture. Translating
such principles into laws could mean banning all medical testing
involving great apes, prohibiting the economic exploitation of
the animals in movies, advertising and circuses and even
stopping, or at least vastly improving, the keeping of great
apes in zoos. In the legal arena, some activists even envision
the day when great apes, acting through human guardians, will be
able to seek justice in court when their rights are violated.

Craig Stanford>> There are legal scholars who have advocated
applying anti-slavery laws to the great apes. So you have
people out there in society who are thinking in very human terms
about these non-human animals.

Saul Gonzalez>> These possibilities were explored last
September at Harvard University when prominent scientists,
animal rights activists and legal experts gathered to discuss
extending rights to great apes. Attorney and author, Steven
Wise, is considered one of the fathers of the primate rights
movement.

Steven Wise>> Liberty and equality are two of the overwhelming,
over-weaning, over-arching values in our legal system and that
we should apply them to the search for the legal rights for
chimpanzees.

Saul Gonzalez>> But Wise acknowledges that religious ideals in
our laws and society make the notion of rights for great apes
ludicrous to many people.

Steven Wise>> The whole idea of dominion, that God made us
superior to non-human animals, is one that is certainly deeply
imbedded in our religious ideas and our cultural ideas and it
would be utterly shocking if it was not imbedded in our law, and
indeed it is imbedded in our law.

Saul Gonzalez>> However, some scholars oppose sharing human
rights with great apes for secular, philosophical reasons.

Tibor Machan>> We are animals, but we are the kind of animals
with culture, with the capacity for civilization, which we do
not share with other animals.

Saul Gonzalez>> Tibor Machan, a Professor of Ethics at Southern
California's Chapman University, is writing a critical study of
the animals rights movement. He says, despite some behavioral
and biological similarities, a moral chasm still separates human
beings and great apes.

Tibor Machan>> Human beings are unique in this moral dimension.
They can do right and wrong. I don't know of any other species
of living things where this kind of vocabulary of blame or
praise, of responsibility, of guilt and of rights is
appropriate.

Saul Gonzalez>> And because, he says, they lack a sense of
human right and wrong, Machan is especially appalled by the idea
of giving legal standing to great apes.

Tibor Machan>> The problems are that rights usually have
something to do with their being capable of being violated. The
law usually tries to prevent that or, if it can't prevent it,
punish the violation. This doesn't make sense with animals.
You don't punish an animal for, say, devouring another animal.
It would be idiotic to suggest that they ought to be taken to
court. That used to be done in the Middle Ages, by the way.
Animals were sued and it was a circus.

Saul Gonzalez>> However, the bitterest clashes in the debate
over whether to extend human rights to primates involves the
ethics of using the animals for scientific research. Machan
favors such research if it benefits human beings and avoids
needless cruelty.

Tibor Machan>> The limits is wanton hurt where there is no
higher purpose served by it. Now if an animal is mistreated in
a laboratory experiment which is supposedly aimed at solving a
problem like curing AIDS or something, then there is nothing
wrong with that.

Craig Stanford>> What I have a terrible problem with is when we
use animals that are so much like us, psychologically and
emotionally -- and I'm talking about great apes in particular --
using them in experiments that we would never consider doing
except in the worst holocaust kind of scenario on ourselves.
That to me makes absolutely no rational or ethical sense.

Saul Gonzalez>> However, the greatest threat to the world's
great apes isn't their treatment in labs and zoos. It's
extinction in the wild. From sub-Saharan Africa to Indonesia,
the animals' survival is at stake as humans encroach on their
habitats.

Craig Stanford>> Here are our very closest kin and we're
watching them. We in our generation today are watching them
disappear. They are so much like us that, to let them just slip
away, this is to me the ultimate sin for a human species.

Saul Gonzalez>> Great ape advocates favor lobbying the United
Nations to step in and administer these threatened habitats for
the benefit of primates, not people.

Val>> So far, New Zealand has gone the furthest to protect
these animals. Lawmakers there have passed measures that
virtually ban scientific experimentation on great apes.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on life and
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Val>> If you've been watching television lately, you know that
gay characters are "in", but television is one thing. Real life
is another, especially in some deeply religious families where
parents can't accept the notion of having a gay child. That's
the focus of a new POV documentary called "Family Fundamentals".
The producer is Arthur Dong and he tells Vicki Curry what it's
like to tell the story of a moral divide within families.

Kathleen Bremner>> "She sat down and she said, "Well, Mom,
there's something I've been meaning to tell you," and I said,
"What's that?" She said, "I'm a lesbian." I said, "But, Susan,
you're a Christian."

Vicki Curry>> Arthur, why did you decide to make a film, a
documentary, about conservative Christians with homosexual
children?

Arthur Dong>> Well, it started with my last film, "License to
Kill", where I profiled killers of gay men. Many of the stories
that the men told me had to do with their religious upbringing,
their very conservative religious upbringing in terms of what
they were taught about homosexuality, in terms of what they were
taught to believe. It struck me as pretty intriguing and
because, for the past few years, a lot of high-profile
politicians were out actively campaigning against gay rights
laws.

Coincidentally, they also had gay children themselves and I
thought, well, what a paradox. What must Thanksgiving dinner be
like in these families? I really saw these families as, in a
way, metaphors or microcosms of the larger public institutions
that we have to deal with in an equalistic way and just saw them
as standing in for that, but on a more personal level.

Vicki Curry>> So you chose to look at three different families.
One of them was the family of Kathleen Bremner and her daughter,
Susan. Why don't you tell me a little bit about them?

Arthur Dong>> Well, they were one of the first families that I
found. I wanted to make sure that I had a family that dealt
with reparative therapy. That is therapy for folks that want to
change their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual.
Kathleen Bremner runs a ministry in San Diego for religiously
conservative parents with gay children.

Kathleen Bremner>> "The bible says that homosexuality is a sin
and it's wrong and it's a destructive behavior and will not
bring happiness. It says that very clearly and it's just wrong.
So, you know, you can't argue with that. That just is the way
it is."

Susan Bremner>> "If you believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of
God and accept Him as your Savior, you have a relationship with
God. It's not my mother's responsibility to monitor my
relationship with God."

Vicki Curry>> Now another family that you looked at was that of
Bret Matthews whose father is a Mormon Bishop in Utah. Tell me
about his story.

Arthur Dong>> Bret Matthews is a heart-wrenching story. I met
him at a time when he was actually going through the process of
really confronting his feelings and his disagreements with his
family. He had come out to his family five years prior to the
time I met him, hadn't gone home since and, in the meantime, had
received a barrage of letters from his family and close
relatives trying to persuade him to change his sexual
orientation through Mormon therapy.

>> "You should have received the book I sent on Saturday by
now. The author says the problem you think you have is a
conditioning just like alcoholism, stealing, drug addiction or
any other transgression and that it can be reversed. Satan can
twist things and deceive you and, Bret, you've got to recognize
that this is what has happened."

Bret Matthews>> "I wanted to be accepted in the Mormon Church.
I wanted to be viewed as a good person, a righteous person, as
somebody that was going to go to heaven. Heaven forbid they
should ever have to go through this."

Vicki Curry>> And the third family that you look at is not a
blood family per se, but a very close relationship between two
men that sort of resembled father-son, and that was with former
Congressman Robert Dornan and his aide.

Arthur Dong>> Right, Brian Bennett. What I wanted to do was
expand the notion of family. The question is, what is family?
What are these bonds we have, the ties that we create with
people who are not blood? With this situation, Bob Dornan and
Brian Bennett did indeed share a father-son relationship.

While serving for Dornan as his chief aide for seven years, he
lived with the Dornan family as an adopted member of the family
and was considered a son, all the while hiding his
homosexuality. Now they come from a strong Catholic
conservative background. During the time, while his mentor
Dornan was out there stomping and promoting his anti-gay
legislation, Brian thought maybe he's right, you know, maybe I
shouldn't be gay.

Brian Bennett>> "I was at home watching "Crossfire" and it was
the first time that I saw Andrew Sullivan debate Patrick
Buchanan. Andrew kept saying, "Pat, you don't know your
Catholic history." It just made me go out and buy books and
read and find out about my Catholic history that I just took for
granted, what the priests and nuns told me my entire life going
to Catholic School or going to church or mass or whatever, that
homosexuality was wrong, only to learn that that wasn't true."

Vicki Curry>> I found it interesting that two of these families
actually chose to stay in touch with their children and to
communicate, to make an effort, to express their concern and
their love for them.

Arthur Dong>> You know, one of the things I realized in making
this film and studying this area of religion and Christianity
was that these parents really do have concerns. What do they
want? They want the family to be reunited in heaven and, in
order for them to do that in terms of their fundamentalist
principles, there are certain codes of behavior they must abide
by on earth in order for them to see their loved ones in heaven.
I find that very credible.

This issue of homosexuality is very divisive, but it may not be
so divisive that families still can't find some way of meeting,
of coming together, and I think the fact is that all the members
of these families, all three families, are trying. They're
struggling a little bit, but the love is still there. With
families, I think, you know, the love is always there despite
all the outside trappings.

Vicki Curry>> Well, Arthur Dong, thank you so much for joining
me at the Coffee Table in Silver Lake.

Arthur Dong>> Thank you.

Val>> Arthur Dong grew up in San Francisco's Chinatown. He's
been producing documentaries for twenty years. His first one
about the struggles of a seamstress earned him an Academy Award
nomination.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Val>> We've told you about solar panels that run businesses and
solar technology that can power a home, but how about an eco-
musician? If you visit the Farmer's Market in Glendale, you're
bound to meet him and, as Toni Guinyard tells us, he hits all
the right notes even if his methods are a little unusual.

Toni Guinyard>> Listen. You hear the music long before you
pinpoint its source. Follow the melody and you'll find a
musician performing. His stage? A bus stop tucked in between
the sidewalk produce stands at the Glendale Farmer's Market.

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> This is Jon Sherman. His music provides
shoppers a break from the normal everyday sounds of the city.
He is the ecology-minded pied piper of Brand Boulevard. Each
note seems to draw the curious a little bit closer and that's
when you notice that the music is being amplified by a portable
solar-powered generator.

Jon Sherman>> It's on right now, but you don't hear it. You
hear the traffic. You don't hear this generator, but it's
generating right now. I'm plugged in to it. My sound system is
powered by it. So it's quiet, non-polluting and it's a
renewable source of energy from that yellow star in the sky.

[Film Clip]

Jon Sherman>> So even if this were a cloudy day, I could power
all day on just the stored energy in the batteries.

Toni Guinyard>> Sherman says it only makes sense that he set up
shop here at a Farmer's Market. He considers himself to be an
eco-musician putting equal emphasis on the ecology and on his
music.

Jon Sherman>> What I sell on the street here is a homegrown CD.
I'm doing everything myself as an independent artist growing
this product with solar power, with the sun, just as all the
fruits and vegetables have been grown. So I think I fit in to
the concept of the Farmer's Market in the sense that I'm growing
my music and selling it here on the street.

Toni Guinyard>> Inspired by nature, Sherman writes his own
music, produces his own CDs and, using solar power, records,
duplicates and prints them at his home studio. His mantra is
"Energy Independence" and, if you ask about his instruments --

Jon Sherman>> This is a bass recorder.

Toni Guinyard>> -- or the solar-powered generators, there's a
good chance he'll stop performing long enough to explain how it
all works.

Jon Sherman>> The concept of a solar generator is basically
very simple. You've got the photovoltaic panels soaking up the
light of the sun and storing that as electricity in these deep
socket batteries. The twelve-volt system, these invertors
convert the twelve volts to regular house voltage that you can
plug into for usable energy. What I've discovered works with a
battery system is car audio, so these are car amps. They're
wired directly to the batteries. I think I'm the only solar-
powered sound in town. I don't have a lot of competition. I'm
hoping to make it so that everyone is on to it.

Toni Guinyard>> So it's not such a novelty?

Jon Sherman>> Yeah. As an environmentalist, that's my
objective to make solar power more popular and I do that
demonstrating it through the music.

Ricardo Guimet>> Beautiful. Very touching. I'm from South
America, so I know all the sounds of the flutes and that touches
me a lot.

Jon Sherman>> Sometimes just playing a few notes on the flute
touches people and it's what they need to hear that day.

Bunk Gardner>> Oh, what I heard, excellent, excellent,
excellent. You don't see those kind of instruments to begin
with. You very seldom see a bass recorder or even a tenor
recorder. You know, it's like voices in a chorus where you have
a soprano, alto, tenor and normally you wouldn't see something
like that, but it's very earthy. I'm an earth sign, so it gets
to me right away.

Jon Sherman>> Sometimes walking by and they see, oh, solar
power, wow. It's powering the music. That's what they need to
see.

Ricardo Guimet>> Not many people like him, you know, that seems
promoted to save the nature of the oaks and stuff like that, so
I'm proud to help somebody like that and also I enjoy it.

Toni Guinyard>> Enjoy it even though each note from this self-
taught musician competes with the noise from the street.

Ricardo Guimet>> This is great. A different kind of song
(laughter), but listen to that. Just listen and that will speak
for me.

Jon Sherman>> And I think that you've got to get out here and
demonstrate the difference, show people what works as opposed to
what really isn't working, what's polluting the environment.
It's not the ideal place for me to play to be heard for my
music, but I think it's a good place to show off solar power
because it's working.

[Film Clip]

Val>> For years, Jon Sherman has been a familiar face at
Descanso Gardens in La Canada. He recently moved his act to the
Glendale Farmer's Market and we're told that he already has a
strong following there.

That's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone here at Life
and Times, thanks for watching.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Tomorrow on Life and Times, scores of mountain resort
homes up in smoke, but should the owners be allowed to rebuild?
And what happens if local authorities say no?

Philip Bruce>> Dennis Hansberger has heard some people say that
nothing could have stood in the way of the fire, but he wonders
if that's true and this devastated neighborhood in the hills
north of San Bernardino only makes him more curious. Why did
some things burn while others didn't? And are there some
lessons here in the ashes on how to avoid another disaster?

Dennis Hansberger>> I believe that most of these homes were not
hardened against fire because they were built long enough ago
that they just simply didn't have the kinds of standards that
would have made it possible for them to survive a fire.

Val>> That's tomorrow on Life and Times.