You are perhaps misunderstanding what animal welfare advocates are up to. No one wants to give animals the right to vote. We don't want to treat animals as humans in every respect. We just don't want, for example, for animals to be considered property (meaning anyone can abuse the shit out of an animal with no repercussions).
Reflect on this yourself, do you think it should be permissible, in our modern society, to buy a dog in a store, lock it up in the basement, and beat it to death over the course of several weeks?
Wow, that escalated quickly: from buying a dog to locking him or her in a basement and beating him or her to death over weeks...
Can I think that one of those things is permissible, but not the others, or do they necessarily come in a package?
And I don't understand what you mean that if animals are considered property "anyone can abuse the shit out of an animal with no repercussions". There are laws against this in many places around the world -animal cruelty laws. In most jurisdictions where there are laws against animal cruelty, laws also consider animals as property, so it's clear that both can work together.
> You are perhaps misunderstanding what animal welfare advocates are up to.
I don't. It's the animal rights advocates that are confused about what is meant by "rights". Animals have no concept of rights, theirs or others, so it's only humans that can choose what animal rights laws should exist. But those are not really animal rights, they're human rights: rights that humans have, or don't have, to behave towards animals in certain ways. For example, I have no right to abuse an animal (and that's as it should be) but that is not a right that an animal has, it's a right that I don't (as I shouldn't).
Rights only make sense as laws of human socieities, but how are animals part of human societies? How can they participate in human societies, if they can't own property, vote, work to support themselves, etc? The absurdity that is obvious in granting animals such rights, that they can't even understand, let alone benefit from, makes it clear why the entire idea of "animal rights" is absurd.
Legislation to protect animals is welcome and much more of its kind is needed, but "rights"? That's "nonsense on stilts".
Reflect on this yourself, do you think it should be permissible, in our modern society, to buy a dog in a store, lock it up in the basement, and beat it to death over the course of several weeks?