Zombie Advocate

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The main plot involves a protest group who are opposed to cruelty to zombies, because, you know, give a shambling corpse a friendly hug and he might briefly remember being human after he's had a few mouthfuls of your face.

—Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw on Dead Rising 2

Civil Rights activists care, so much so that opponents derisively label them "bleeding hearts." But what they fail to consider is that the Zombie Advocate's friends may well rip it from their chest.

The Zombie Advocate is a (usually) normal person who advocates for the "human rights" of... well, things other than humans. Not just zombies, but also robots, monsters, and other inhuman creatures that may inhabit the setting. They will argue against killing them and make a case that they're not dangerous, but Reluctant Monsters who are no different from human at all. Well, except for being demons, clones, made of metal and/or having died.

They may not even be that far off. If the creature being advocated for is genuinely good the Zombie Advocate can get The Hunter to stop from committing a Van Helsing Hate Crime they might regret. In more idealistic stories they're instrumental in getting the angry villagers or disdainful scientists to reconcile with the monster (unless some idiot goes and sabotages their attempts at diplomacy). Interestingly, they may well have hated or feared the monster just like everyone else, only changing their mind after discovering their gentle side.

On the other hand, the Zombie Advocate may have that hand bitten off by the "person" they're "helping."

In settings where the monsters really are evil inhuman murderers, this position becomes suicidally misguided. When a loved one is turning or turned into a monster, the Zombie Advocate may go into denial and hide their condition or pretend nothing is wrong. While trying to protect them from discovery and destruction is understandable, it is no less suicidal or genocidal. Extremely far gone advocates may even try to care for them and "feed" them. Of course, if the non-human is intelligent, it may well be the creature is tricking them or offering conversion.

In both these later cases, they usually die at the hands of their "loved one".

Compare Black Shirt and Gullible Lemmings. Not to be confused with soulless lawyers.

Examples of Zombie Advocate include:

Anime and Manga

In Highschool of the Dead, a group taking refuge on Saya's parents' estate criticize them for slaughtering the undead indiscriminately rather than searching for a cure. Who are, of course, eventually eaten by the zombie hordes because those idiots from the orgybus messed up and let them into the compound. Just in case you were wondering, they actually try to reason with the zombies while they are being eaten. (The ringleader panics, stabs a zombie in the eye before the moment of truth, and is still in denial.)
Kirby becomes one in Kirby: Right Back at Ya! episode "Hatch Me If You Can". He becomes friends with a Galbo baby, even though it's causing nothing but trouble for the citizens of Cappy Town. Admittedly, Kirby isn't so different from the Galbo, as they both have huge appetites, so their friendship is understandable. Unfortunately, this was King Dedede's plan...he later sends in an adult Galbo to fight Kirby. Due to his friendship with the Galbo, he's not willing to fight the adult one. However, it turns out that Kirby was right to befriend the baby Galbo, as the baby Galbo legitimately cared about his welfare. When the adult Galbo seemingly kills him with his fire breath, Kirby kills the adult Galbo in retaliation. It's then revealed that the baby Galbo had fireproof skin so that he was unharmed.

Film

Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast becomes this for the Beast toward the end, trying to stop the angry villagers from Storming the Castle with Torches and Pitchforks.
How to Train Your Dragon has Hiccup advocate for dragon-kind. He is, however, an example of the former kind of Zombie Advocate (that is, where it's not sheer insanity to take such a position), and the movie is ultimately about proving that dragons aren't a danger to the Vikings by choice and the two races can get along just fine. Once he helps destroy the giant monster-dragon that has enslaved the other dragons and is forcing them to pillage the Viking village to feed its endless hunger, anyway.
In the Second Renaissance sections of The Animatrix, there are protests and even a Million Machine March promoting civil rights for sentient machines.
The Dead Next Door has a scene in which protesters advocating zombie rights are attacked by the zombies.
Ghostbusters raised the possibility of ghost advocacy groups when they showed a cover of "The Atlantic" magazine that asked "Do Ghosts Have Civil Rights?"
Colin: The zombie's sister chases away kids trying to terminate him, then pleads with her boyfriend to take him back to their apartment and tie him to the shower head. She shows him family photos (which he snarls at), gets bitten for her trouble, hides it, then dies and comes back to wander the Earth with her brother.
Survival of the Dead has a plot that boils down to a group of Army deserters stumbling across an island divided between the rule of two clans. The Muldoons are Zombie Advocates to a man/woman, chaining up or imprisoning their zombies and striving to teach them to feed on animal flesh rather than human flesh. The O'Flynns recognize that the zombies are nothing but predatory corpses and are determined to wipe out any zombie that shows up on the island. End result is the two clans being more concerned with shooting each other then with dealing with the growing army of zombies on the island.
Surprisingly absent in the Underworld franchise, in spite Awakening having the perfect setup for it. Even the human cop forming a temporary alliance with Selene seems off-put at the notion of having to work with a vampire to defeat the lycans. But for some strange reason, even with the loved ones being turned into vampires, nobody ever bothers to petition for their loved ones' rights or form advocacy groups.
Hotel Transylvania is a Perspective Flip on the Trope, as Mavis is the "zombie" (or rather, vampire) trying to establish peace between monsters and humans. Unfortunately she is just as naive as most other examples of this Trope.

Literature

Hermione in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire started S.P.E.W., the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. Notable in that house elves do not want better treatment, being a race of Extreme Doormats, with Dobby being the exception. Considering that they are physically and mentally incapable of disobeying their owners, it may be fair to say the elves generally lack the ability to independently "want" anything in particular, Dobbies and Kreachers notwithstanding. Hermione's understanding of the situation gradually improves from Book 4 ("The other elves will see how happy [Dobby] is, being free, and slowly it'll dawn on them that they want that too!”) to Book 7 (after Kreacher is punishing himself for calling her a Mudblood: "Don't you see how sick it is, the way they've got to obey?"). While Hermione's position seems to be the author's, it isn't exactly clear what can be done to address the situation. In general though, it's clear that a lot of masters take advantage of their house elves' psychology and end up physically and mentally abusing them in ways that sentient creatures shouldn't have to put up with, and Tom Riddle used a house elf to cover up his murder of Hepzibah Smith so that he could take away her prized possessions for himself. Word of God states that Hermione eventually gets a job in the Ministry working to pass laws requiring that House Elves are treated humanely in their positions. A good example of the problem is Dumbledore's hiring of Dobby. The first offer was good wages and weekends off, but Dobby talked him down.
Discworld
- Spoofed in Reaper Man with Reg Shoe (a Zombie Advocate who is, himself, a zombie) and his "Fresh Start Club".
- A similar thing happens with the Black Ribbon Temperance Society, a society of Friendly Neighborhood Vampires who pledge to refrain from drinking human blood in the hopes that that will get them treated better by people. It usually works.
- And not forgetting the Campaign for Equal Hights who are an extremely pushy human-run "Dwarf rights" group. They campaign against the use of phrases such as 'Short Weight' and that since Dwarfs are shorter than Humans that there should be three Dwarfs hired for every two Humans. The Dwarfs themselves are generally baffled by the campaign... besides if they are insulted by a Human they have other ways of dealing with it, sometimes involving a battleaxe...
The "Breath of Life" movement in the Felix Castor series are this for all the undead, at least in principle.
In the Simon Canderous series, the vampire Aidan Christos is a bit of a Jerkass, but the liaison between humans and vampires once the vampires convince the DEA they don't want to wipe out humanity or cause a human-vampire war.
Anita Blake is—in the early novels—an ardent defender of zombie rights, and even lobbies in support of a Bill of Zombie Rights. Not because she thinks they're harmless, mind you. It's more about respect for the dead, and preventing their being raised for irresponsible reasons. Like, um, necrophilia. Yeah, it's that kind of series.
Alaina becomes this for the Stationery Voyagers, as do, ironically, their one-time enemies from Markerterion after the death of Nonpriel. But it's more about advocating the Voyagers' rights to stay focused on their mission of diplomacy and creation of the Planets Together Group in order to keep a One World Order from becoming necessary to defeat the threats of Astrabolo and Melchar; and less about defending them simply for being Stationeries.
- Most of the world merely views them as accessories to one side or another in the Culture War, which has engulfed the entire planet. This attitude actually forces the Voyagers to choose a side on issues they didn't want to be a part of, putting their lives in danger when the losing teams in The War On Straw feel ideologically threatened.
- Becomes even more complicated/ridiculous when Stationery theology turns out to resemble that of evangelical Minshanism a little too closely, causing all other religious groups on Mantith to feel threatened. Church groups rush to protect the Voyagers, while Hollywood Atheist officials hire hitmen and gay pride extremists come after them with molotovs and start riots to chase the Voyagers out of town.
Monster Advocates in the Monster Hunter International series advocate for the rights of monsters in a world where non-evil examples of monsters are almost always Exclusively Evil. The few species who aren't (mostly those Dungeons & Dragons would call demi-humans) are already left alone and/or considered legally human, and the extremely rare examples in other types already have a program to get this stats. Vampires seem to be the ones these people are drawn to, even though the series makes very clear (almost as if in response that other famous writer who shares the author's faith) undead are never good, even when Eldritch Abominations and literal fallen angels can have a good example or two pop up. Despite this, vampires are still supported by them. These useful idiots play a minor role in Guardian but have a much larger role in the spinoff series Monster Hunter Memoirs, where the profession monster hunter main character learns his hated academia hippie mother is one prominent enough to testify in front of Congress.

Live-Action TV

Hershel Greene in The Walking Dead. He thinks of them as sick people and keeps a barn filled with his infected family members and neighbors, even those that get trapped trying to enter his farm. And he feeds them. With chicken.
The vampires of True Blood have lobbyists and talking heads just like every other special interest group.
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gib Cain scoffs at having to deal with "People for the Ethical Treatment of Werewolves" after Buffy and co. stop him from killing a werewolf on the grounds that it's still a human being. It even spewed a real life counterpart.
In the latter part of season 2 of the 2004 Battlestar Galactica, a group of activists briefly emerged who argued that the Colonials should pursue peace and coexistence with the Cylons. This despite the fact that the Cylons had almost entirely eradicated all of mankind in a nuclear holocaust and pursued the scant few survivors into deep space, the activists still characterized Admiral Adama and Galactica's campaign to protect the fleet from being wiped out of existence as a "relentless war machine".
When the study group plays Dungeons and Dragons on Community, Britta keeps getting distracted from their actual goals by such causes:

Abed as NPC: How can I help you, dear madam?
Britta as PC: Oh please, no need for such deference. I am no better than a gnome.
Abed: Yes, you are, madam. You are a human warrior, which is five species classes greater than I.
Britta: That's disgusting! Don't talk like that!
Abed: I am so sorry, madam! Please don't report me for execution!
Britta: Oh, no, no, no, I didn't mean that! Guys, we’ve got to do something about these gnomes!
Annie: Um!
Jeff: BRITTA, ASK THE STUPID GNOME WHERE WE CAN GET A PEGASUS!!

Puppet Shows

On Fraggle Rock, Mokey felt sorry for the Doozers having their buildings eaten, and convinced the other Fraggles to stop. Turns out the Doozers liked having their hard work destroyed because it left room for them to keep building.

Tabletop Games

Shadowrun. In his will the dragon Dunkelzahn set up an organization called the Astral Space Preservation Society. One of its duties was to "protect the rights of the denizens of astral space". Some of these denizens are insect spirits (which infest and take over human beings), toxic spirits (which are used in the evil plans of toxic shamans) and Horrors, who are Eldritch Abominations that devastate the surface of the Earth every few thousand years. Given both Dunkelzahn's sense of humor and some of the other bequests he made in his will, it's likely to have been an obscure joke, a long-term gambit of some sort, or both.

Video Games

Stacey Forsythe in Dead Rising 2 is a zombie rights activist believing that zombies should be treated with respect. She leads the Nevada chapter of a national organization call C.U.R.E. -- Citizens for Undead Rights & Equality. Outside, there are many zombified protesters, some still mindlessly holding their protest signs. The game doesn't go into great detail about the goals of C.U.R.E., save that they oppose rounding them up for the zombie-killing game show, Terror is Reality. Since there is no cure for a turned zombie, they probably want the zombies to be given a humane execution and proper due to the dead, and not to be killed simply for sport. Unfortunately, one of them snapped. Brandon C.U.R.E. member (whose one of the game's several psychopaths) decided to take Zombie Rights to an extreme, though it's hinted that he's a hypocrite.
- A minor British political party of the same name was created as part of the viral marketing campaign for the game.
In Siren: Blood Curse, Melissa Gale becomes one of these near the end of the first "time loop". Both her daughter and husband are turned into Shibito zombies, and Melissa can be seen "comforting" her trapped shibito-fied daughter, as the husband comes up behind her to kill her.
Team Plasma in Pokémon Black and White are half this, half Animal Wrongs Group. The founder was raised with abused Pokémon so he'd have a skewed-view of Pokémon/human relationships, and is eventually shown by the main character that such cases are the exception instead of the rule. It's indicated that some members of the group are hypocrites, though one Plasma Grunt reconsiders her membership when she realizes that she and her Patrat are close.
Stubbs the Zombie is Wideload Games' attempt to present the zombie point of view, supplemented with arguments on their website.

It's no surprise that the all-human media cartel resorts to distortions and name-calling; their anti-zombie bias has been evident for decades...

Online game Urban Dead naturally has these, generally staffed by zombies. One even had on its webpage a campaign to help cure the humans. With the normal tender zombie love, of course.
Gabriel and Gabriella of Dead Hungry Diner are a variation on the "actually right" version. Initially idolizing Vanda Hellsing—who protected their town from zombies by fighting them—they discover by accident that not only are the zombies simply hungry rather than malevolent, but they'll gladly eat certain berries instead of people—even paying for the privilege. They convert the local cemetery into a diner for monsters, while their former hero devolves into Van Helsing Hate Crimes, refusing to accept any solution to the problem that doesn't involve killing the monsters.

Web Comics

Tsukiko from The Order of the Stick is unlike most necromancers in fiction. Rather than see the undead as slaves, she considers them morally superior to the living on the grounds that the dead don't lie or go around hurting feelings. She acts motherly toward her vicious flesh-eating creations, and flirted with the lich Xykon in their first meeting. Since he's a Complete Monster, the whole thing is mostly Played for Laughs. In her case it's more of a You Fail Logic Forever situation: she reasons that since the living are mean liars who go around hurting each other, the undead (as the antithesis of living creatures) must be kind, loving gentle creatures. She holds to this belief regardless of the mountains of evidence to the contrary right up until the End. Of course, there's also other reasons for her behavior.
In a story arc in the World of Warcraft-based comic, Dark Legacy Comics, Keydar joins a group that supports NPC rights, culminating in violence towards NPCs being made illegal. Of course, in the world of an MMO, killing NPCs is integral to society, so the economy crumbles and people starve and they can't get meat or loot anything.
In Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, Rachel-Rebecca the Third established civil rights for The Undead after winning the case for her own murder.
Megatokyo: The Magical Girl tries to save a zombie Godzilla. (Guilt is a factor here, since she precipitiated the infection.)
Exterminatus Now has zombies rather vehement in this regard. Not that it helped (see also a few next pages).
In the Ciem Webcomic Series, the US military, which tolerated the Phaelites, takes some responsibility of providing advocacy for Phexos. The Mafia, which tolerated Meethlites, does the same for Meethexos and members of the Hebbleskin Gang. Outside those extremes, there really is nobody to advocate for the rights of Phexos and Meethexos, because most of the world is seen as being too wrapped up in its own problems to care. As such, Phexos and Meethexos are bigger threats to each other along factional lines than they are to humanity at large. The one time a judge tried to start a Phexo and Marlquaanite ban, it backfired horribly.
Paranormal Mystery Squad has PETM ("People for the Ethical Treatment of Monsters") which claims to be this. The name itself should set off at least two alarms, but it becomes more and more obvious that PETM is much weirder than that, and not in a good way, even if it occasionally uses folk like Summerfield who genuinely believes they serve the proclaimed cause. By the time their even more shady partners are revealed, it's not a surprise at all.

Web Original

This page is dedicated to advocating the rights, and fighting the stereotypes, of zombies.
The Chick introduced in I Am Not Infected is a member of a group of zombie rights protesters, who seems to hang out with the guys' pet zombie and "girl talk".
In SCP Foundation lore, this role is held by the Serpent’s Hand. While this group is pragmatic and realizes certain SCPs should remain contained, they feel the Foundation (or “Jailers”, as they call them) take their job too far and imprison many innocent and harmless creatures whose only crime is being abnormal (they are not wrong). The overall plan of the Serpent’s Hand is to expose the Foundation for what they do and convince (or force) the world to accept SCPs as deserving of the same rights as humans. This also brings them into conflict with the Foundation’s rivals, the Global Occult Coalition (or “Book Burners”, as the Hand calls them). They are usually enemies of the Foundation, but will occasionally cooperate with them against the Chaos Insurgency and Children of the Scarlet King (both of whom they call “Madmen”), SAPPHIRE (“Deniers”), and Sarkites, although for the record, pretty much everyone sides with the Foundation against them.

Western Animation

Mark Lilly, from Ugly Americans. Actually, this is almost the entire point of the show.
Generator Rex episode "Outpost" introduces Green Fist, group breaking out captured EVO s from Providence bases. Their leader, Valentina claims they return EVO s to their natural environment and is the first character, who ever called Rex out on being Hunter of His Own Kind.
Godzilla: The Series had S.C.A.L.E, an Animal Wrongs Group that thought mutations were the final step of evolution and that they should run free in the world. Needless to say, Kaiju running free = City-destroying rampages.
- Not to mention that the "poor creatures" they wanted to free from Monster Island included a giant king cobra, a fire-breathing mosquito, a giant bat, and a bipedal squid-like monster that feeds on tar (And, considering the man-made things found in cities that are made from tar...).