The pet's rights

Gay men and lesbians have long fought for justice, equality, and compassion. After all, they know what it's like to be treated unfairly regardless of race or sexual orientation—or maybe even species. “We have experienced what it’s like to be the outcasts, to be the underdog,” says Marcello Forte, 37, executive director of the Animal Haven shelter in Queens, N.Y.’s Flushing neighborhood. “And one of the injustices gays and lesbians are sensitive to is animals dying simply because there aren't enough homes.”

Forte is part of a national movement for “no-kill” animal rights policies that spare healthy and adoptable animals from being euthanized. Nationwide, millions of healthy cats and dogs die in shelters every year because they have nowhere to go. Now many gays and lesbians are fully involved in the effort to stop euthanasia.

In 1994, San Francisco became the first city in the United States to implement a no-kill approach to dealing with stray, abandoned, and abused animals. San Francisco’s Animal Care and Control Agency and the city’s privately run Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals work together to significantly reduce the number of euthanized pets by encouraging adoption, instituting low-cost spaying/neutering programs, investing in foster care and medical treatment, and vastly improving shelters. When adoptable animals cannot be placed in a timely manner through city shelters, they are transferred to SPCA facilities until homes can be found for them.

Since then, similar no-kill policies have gone into effect at select shelters in Illinois, Virginia, Texas, and Utah as well as throughout several Florida counties. Now New York City and Los Angeles are vying to become the next citywide no-kill havens, and gay and lesbian advocates in both cities are leading the effort.

Since 2000, Forte, a former speech pathologist, has worked with Jane Hoffman, president of the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals, and animal rights attorney Mariann Sullivan to stop euthanasia of the city’s adoptable animals. “It should be unacceptable that healthy cats and dogs are killed in NYC shelters simply because there is not enough space,” says Hoffman from her Greenwich Village apartment, which she shares with her partner, Ellen Celnik, four rescued dogs, and as many cats.