First, those sentiments sound warmly familiar, sort of like a relative or friend who has simply chosen to set up shop in one's house - after an invitation to spend the night - and refused to leave. Smith's platitudinous pancake on the need for human equality would have been more in keeping with the struggles of decades past when people were actually waging political campaigns to gain equality of rights for their fellow humans. Now, ( more on this a bit later ) some say they still are. But at this point in human history and in American history as well, one would be hard pressed to find advocates of human inequality : even white supremacists ( in public at least ) don't tend to trash minorities or non-white skinned caucasians - they just think the "races" ( a discredited notion, race ) should live apart, in their own white poweri-stans or whatever-istans. Separate but rhetorically equal. Overt ideologies of racial supremacy are generally held in distaste these days.

Wesley's Smith's puffy slogan is directed elsewhere : it does very useful work for the Christian right. First by asserting that humans are - well - just categorically different from animals, presumeably because we are held by some to posess things called "souls" while other animals are barred from the gate - not even tiny, wee little souls for the non-human animal kingdom regardless of endless scientific discoveries on the linguistic and problem solving capabilities of parrots, the songs of whales, whatever.

That's the first ideological work this Starbucks ID coffee cup does, but there's also another subtext : why would an ID advocate be talking about alleged inequalities among humans anyway ? Has slavery been reinstituted en masse somewhere while the rest of us were sleeping ? Remember, Wesley Smith is probably not talking about economic inequality here. No, and slavery - although practiced here an there - is widely condemned and nowhere around the globe ( as far as I'm currently aware ) is it legal. Might Smith, perchance, be referring to gay rights, or women's rights ?

Probably not - think of the wording. "Answer no and , and it means that we are merely another animal in the forest." - It's actually a rather sleazily framed construction. Answer 'yes', and support ( at least ) ID claims as to the specialness of humans. Anwser 'no' and you're some sort of sociopathic monster.

So, Starbucks is - at the very least - patronizing claims as to the inherent superiority of humans over the animal kingdom.

But, there's another dimension :  assuming Wesley Smith is not plugging for same-sex marriage or the long-marooned Equal Rights Amendment, or decrying some phantom recrudescence of a legal slave trade, where's the public endorsement that some humans, like the inhabitants of Orwell's "Animal Farm", are more equal than others ?

Well, many Americans - but maybe not so many urban Americans along the coasts - will understand that Smith's emphasis  that any human life is equal to any other human life is simply a coded means of referring to the controversy over abortion rights - in which "the unborn" ( how "unborn" anyway ? one week old "unborn" or "eight and a half months ? ) deserve the same rights as "the born", and in which many place newly fertilized human eggs in the same category, as fully human.

PZ Meyers, at Pharyngula, underscores my suspicion on Smith's beliefs,  and I'll take his word for it.

It's sloganeering for ideologues.

Tell me, what is "human"? Knowing what Smith's other opinions are, he reduces humanity to a 'mere' fertilized cell, and his goal is equal rights for blastulae

It is - of course - far from clear. But, of course, those who believe that freshly fertilized human eggs = "humans" ( despite the rather blaring morphological and gestational differences ) will likely be willing to support bans on most forms of birth control that - say many leaders of the Christian right, often in error but with persuasive conviction - are alleged to kill "egg-humans".

Am I correct ? Maybe, maybe not. But I think I am, and on that note I'd suggest that Starbucks should at least be upfront about the political positions it chooses to patronize. "Human have souls, and animals don't ! Eggs are people too ! Ban abortion ! Ban birth control !" - Now, those slogans might jar many Startbucks patrons right out the door, but at least they'd be honest.

Postscript: Some feel the flap over Starbucks' ID coffee cup is overblown, and the man himself, Wesley Smith also weighs in. Kudos to PunkassBlog for the original notice of the dubious ( to some ) coffee cup quote, in a piece entitled "Starbucks makes an unintelligent design decision"