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Comment by iab | Hacker News Reader

> Cedar had been purchased in April 2022 by Long for her 9-year-old daughter

> “She loved him as a family pet,” the lawsuit says.

> The family entered Cedar into the Shasta District Fair’s junior livestock auction on June 24, 2022,

> Long wrote that she had communicated with Dahle’s office, which did not object to the goat being saved from slaughter.

> “I will pay you back for the goat and any other expenses I caused,” Long wrote. “I would like to ask for your support in finding a solution.”

The buyer was fine with the withdrawal of the sale, however the middleman got angry:

> “As a mother I am not unsympathetic regarding your daughter and her love for her animal,” Shasta District Fair Chief Executive Officer Melanie Silva emailed Long the next day. “Having said that please understand the fair industry is set up to teach our youth responsibility and for the future generations of ranchers and farmers to learn the process and effort it takes to raise quality meat.

Had the fair organisers quietly allowed the animal to be returned, one of this controversy would have happened. A bit of common sense would have saved a lot of drama. Now the fair looks terrible.

https://amp.sacbee.com/news/local/article273127820.html The fair should look terrible, along with the Sheriffs. The fair Director stated that she needed to be sure that this child learned an important life lesson. her parents also taught this child a lesson. The lesson is that you do not hide your ethics behind the law. The law is mutable, you need to have lines in the sand that are not. civil disobedience in the face of something in ethical happening is the right thing to do. Note- MLK- for starters. and saying ‘I was just following orders’- Is a poor excuse

People like Melanie Silva, business director of Shasta District Fair, from Shasta County, in Anderson, California don't understand this.

In her words[1], the slaughter of this girl's pet was justified because it created

> a negative experience for the fairgrounds as this has been all over Facebook and Instagram

In other words, her feelings were hurt because her shenanigans were exposed to the public, and she wanted to take revenge by killing this little girl's pet.

Horrible human beings like this cannot be reasoned with.

[1]: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-30/goat-sla...

among the lessons of responsibility should be you are responsible for your own ethics and your own morals and there should be lines that if you believe in those lines that you do not cross- no matter what the law says. for example all of the abolitionists and those helping slaves escape through the underground railroad or breaking the law. having said that they are still responsible. they held that their responsibility was to a greater ethics than that which is simply legal especially as the law is changeable. this child learned a good lesson in that lesson is that sometimes you do what is right in your heart rather than what the law says to do and she learned that her parents have her back

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