Dan Mathews

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Dan Mathews, Senior Vice President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

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Dan Mathews is the Senior Vice President of PETA and known for heading PETA's most controversial and attention-getting campaigns, including the "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" ads, as well as campaigns involving celebrities such as Morrissey, Pamela Anderson, Pink, and Paul McCartney. He began his career with PETA as a receptionist, and worked his way up.

Mathews was born October 25, 1964, in Newport Beach, California, United States, and attended Costa Mesa High School in Costa Mesa, where he was known as a punk rocker and later graduated from American University. He has two brothers. In his teens, he worked at Disneyland and McDonalds, and as a young adult he worked in Italy as a model and actor.

Mathews has been arrested over twenty times all over the world in his efforts to protect the rights of animals and create public awareness. As a consequence, he is often in the news.

Mathews first efforts encouraging celebrity participation for PETA and animal rights involved convincing his punk rocker friend Nina Hagen to write a song about animals. Don’t Kill the Animals, which Hagen recorded with Lene Lovich, became a popular club song and made PETA’s message more accessible to a younger audience.

In 2000, he was named by gay lifestyle magazine Genre as one of the most influential people of the new century. But when asked by the magazine who he considered an influential gay, he joked, spree killer “Andrew Cunanan, because he got Gianni Versace to stop using fur,” a quip for which he was criticized. In 2007, Mathews was ranked 37th in Out Magazine's "50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America".

His most recent campaign has been against the Australian Wool Industry and the practice known as 'mulesing', PETA recently settled, out of court, a case brought against them in Australia.

Dan Mathews memoir, Committed was published by Atria books in 2007. ^[1]

[edit] External links

• Dan Matthews in conversation with Richard Fidler (audio available)

• Naked in Nashville Mary Mancini and Freddie O'Connell of Liberadio(!) interview Dan Matthews

• MikeyPod Podcast with Dan Matthews

[edit] References

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