Lady Gaga has plenty of fans—especially in the gay community, which she has embraced so fervently. Gay Gaga fans at PETA loved her all the more when she came out against fur, telling Ellen DeGeneres, "I hate fur and I don't wear fur." But recent furry Gaga photos show that the Lady may be a turncoat. So PETA VP Dan Mathews has written to Gaga to find out if she's become a "Judas" to animals:

Dear Gaga,

Many of your gay fans, I among them, have long admired what you told Ellen: "I hate fur and I don't wear fur." I included a link because these recent photos of you in fox and rabbit and with a wolf carcass make it appear that you have amnesia. I'm also including this brief video hosted by Tim Gunn showing the violent cruelty that you promote when you wear fur. What happened? Are your stylists telling you that it's fake, or are you a turncoat? Many gays are animal advocates because we recognize that the same arrogance and indifference that some have toward animal suffering has at times been directed toward us personally because of our orientation. PETA has long participated in Pride events around the country, and just last week, we helped lead protests against Chick-fil-A. But by wearing those dumb furs in a heat wave, you're making yourself a target just like the mindless Kim Kardashian. As we plan our fall campaigns, please tell us whether what you gracefully told Ellen was heartfelt or just a pose.

We await your reply.

Sincerely,

Dan Mathews

Senior Vice President

PETA

What You Can Do

Gaga has refused to say whether the furs that she has been wearing are fake, so won't you chime in to try and get her to reply?

jinterwas/CC by 2.0

A hunter in Belarus wound up in the hospital after he was shot by a fox he had wounded and was trying to kill with the butt of his rifle. As the determined fox fought back, she pulled the trigger of the gun with her paw. The bullet struck the hunter's leg, and the fox made her escape.

Here's hoping that the fox is recovering and that the hunter has learned his lesson. If not, the next time they come face to face, she just might take a trophy for her den.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

I'm predicting that Fox's new musical comedy, Glee, will be this fall's breakout hit (sorry, Ashlee).

Certainly the show's beautiful and brainy star Lea Michele, who has drawn rave reviews for her various Broadway performances, has hit a high note with us.

Lea joined Chrissie Hynde, Pink, Pamela Anderson, Alec Baldwin, Rue McClanahan, and other notables who "don't stop believin'" that the cruel and dangerous buggy biz needs to be done away with.

I'll be parked on my La-Z-Boy on Wednesday nights to catch Glee. Do you plan to tune in?

Written by Karin Bennett

There are two things I really like about the story that hit the wires this week reporting New York’s recent ban on anal and genital electrocution of animals for fur. The first thing’s kind of obvious: Animals on fur farms in New York won’t be electrocuted any more (they’ll still suffer, but their deaths will now, hopefully, be just a bit less painful). In case you haven’t kept up to date on electrocution techniques, this isn’t like sticking your finger into a wall socket: The fur farmers attach one electrode to the fox’s or raccoon’s ear or muzzle and stick the other one in the animal’s anus or vagina. The result is a dagger-like heart attack without loss of consciousness. On one fur farm we investigated, the farmer plugged the chinchillas into the wall socket and timed it by listening to a song on the radio—then skinned them without checking to see if they were dead.

But the thing that should be really remarkable for most people reading this story is not the fact that New York has banned electrocution—but the implication that this is still legal everywhere else. That’s right. New York is now the only state where anally and genitally electrocuting fur-bearing animals (fur farmers do it this way so they won’t damage the pelts) could get you into trouble.

As my friend Melissa put it when she was interviewed for the AP piece, "Anal electrocution is common practice in fur farms across the world. A lot of these methods aren't effective and these animals will wake up while they are being skinned."

That’s all. I just wanted to drive home that point. It’s awesome that New York is leading the way here, and hopefully other states will soon follow suit. But this is also a good opportunity to store away that little tidbit about anal and genital electrocution being 100 percent legal in 49 out of 50 states—just in case anyone ever tries to tell you that wearing fur is anything other than reprehensible.

… it stars me, so it must be awesome. Actually, it stars a bunch of people at the forefront of PETA’s work to help animals, who really know what they’re talking about. I just get to introduce them. This month’s Podcast features PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich talking about how to be an effective advocate for animals (e.g., more with the positive outreach, less with the vegan police force), and it’s really compelling stuff. So if you’ve got 20 minutes to spare this afternoon, get your headphones on, pull up an Excel spreadsheet to make it look like you’re working, and listen to Bruce’s Effective Advocacy tips. Then let me know what you think.

If you were following the Super Bowl ads closely this year, you would have noticed an advocacy ad for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which depicted a drug dealer lamenting his recent lack of customers, because “kids are just getting high out of their medicine cabinets nowadays.” Which, well, no problem with that specifically—it’s a perfectly sound message reminding parents to be careful about their prescription drugs. Some big question marks do arise, however, when you consider the email that PETA received from FOX Television last month when we submitted our own series of ads to run during the Super Bowl:

So what’s going on here? Was FOX outright lying to us to get us off their case, or is there something I’m missing here? To make FOX’s double standard even more obvious, one of the three ads that we submitted (the series was designed to raise awareness about KFC’s cruel treatment of chickens) specifically addressed the issue of drug abuse. I’ve posted that ad below.

Here’s the letter we sent to FOX Broadcasting Company's VP of Advertising Sales today, asking him, essentially, WTF?, and you can watch the entire series of ads that were banned from Super Bowl consideration here.

Or maybe it’s fox. Either way, a whole lot of them had to die so that the aging Stone could wear her desperation on her sleeve on the red carpet yesterday. I hate to give this photo any ink at all, as I’m sure the only reason Stone wore the hideous wrap was because she’s having trouble getting any meaningful attention these days. And because she’s total trash.

And fyi, it’s not just that Stone is uneducated on this issue. She knows that animals suffer horribly when they are killed for their fur. We’ve written, called, sent videos, you name it. She just doesn’t care. She is, as my friend Joel puts it, just a horrible human being.

So we just heard from Christina Aguilera that she has replaced the fox-fur stole she wears on stage with a faux-fur version after receiving a letter from PETA. Apparently, she had specifically asked her tour's costume designer, Roberto Cavalli, to only use fake fur, but in a press release to Women’s Wear Daily, Cavalli bragged that he had sent her a stole made from real, dead white foxes.

It may be that Roberto Cavalli was still sulking after PETA members disrupted his Milan fashion show this fall and decided to take it out on some foxes, but we're very grateful to Christina for doing the right thing from the start: After PETA VP Dan Mathews emailed Aguilera the Cavalli item and a link to Stella McCartney’s video exposé showing how foxes are anally electrocuted for their fur, he got an immediate response saying that Christina is “very upset” because she “only ever wears fake fur.” The fox stole has already been replaced with a faux-fur version, and the tour is continuing in Europe 100 percent fox-free. Thank you, Christina!