About the best that can be said for Clay Brittle, the man who breeds and fights gamecocks (“Playing Chicken,” 2/19), is that, at 75 years old, he’ll probably die soon. Brittle argues that it’s natural for male chickens to fight; maybe so, but nature didn’t intend for these chickens to be strapped with razor-sharp blades

and then thrown together in a ring

in front of a cheering crowd of drunken ignoramuses.

One can’t defend cruelty to animals simply by citing history, as Brittle and his fellow sadists do. Plenty of abominable practices used to be legal, such as bear baiting, child labor, and, as your article pointed out, slavery. Unfortunately for Brittle and his ilk, there’s a little thing called human progress, and just as past abuses were made illegal, so, too, will cockfighting ultimately be made illegal throughout the entire United States.

Cockfighters are throwbacks to an uglier time. Here’s to their imminent extinction, and to the extinction of all blood sports.

North Cleveland Park

via the Internet