There are only two roles in a zero-sum contest: Adversary or Audience.

Each adversary argues for one position. Each audience member observes the argument and determines which position won. There is no referee, and there certainly is no place for an honest broker. If you chose to offer an argument in this contest, the audience will see you as an adversary, and an adversary will see you as an enemy or an ally. There is no neutral ground in a zero-sum contest.

An obvious example of this is an election. The adversaries are the political parties and their candidates and supporters. The audience is the electorate. In a two-candidate election, one candidate will win and one will lose, i.e., one candidate scores +1 and the other scores -1, hence, 0 is the sum. Any argument offered during the election labeled independent will either be seen as a disguised argument for one side or the other, or it will be ignored as academic to the contest.

Between elections there should be room to discuss issues on neutral ground, but every issue of any significance already has its vested interests keeping score. While the audience for any given issue may be small at first, it can grow quickly as any action on that issue is impending. Even an academic discussion of an issue on neutral ground with respected experts in the field will quickly be used by the vested interests to serve their cause. If discussion produces positive results for the vested interest, they will be trumpeted as proof positive (e.g., 4 out of 5 doctors prefer Camels), while any negative results will be trashed (e.g., elitist eggheads spew junk science).

Moral: If you choose to be more than an audience member, prepare to take a side because there is no room in the middle.

I am thinking about writing a series on the situation we find ourselves in relative to animal welfare institutions. They are not ostensibly animal rights organizations, but the animus of some of their actions points to an animal rights agenda.

Here's a small example from our local Humane Society. It is called You Can Help Report Animal Cruelty, and it is clearly aimed at young readers. It is one of their pages on Facebook.

Note that it includes Age as an indicator of abuse. "Is the animal very old or very young?"

So, a previously well-intentioned and well administered welfare organization is now encouraging children to accuse their neighbors of animal cruelty if they have a puppy, a kitten or an older pet.