Published: mic (January 31, 2013)
A dog in Tennessee is going to lose his life today because of suspicions that he is gay.
As explained by Examiner.com, “According to the prior owner, the dog was seen ‘hunched over,’ another male dog, therefore, in this owner’s mind, the dog must be gay.”
One could respond to this by pointing out that dogs “hump” each other as a way of asserting dominance, thus undermining the entire basis of the erstwhile owner’s decision to drop his animal off at a “high kill” animal control center. Of course, homophobes already display a pathetically poor understanding of human biology (e.g., insisting that homosexuality is a choice rather than epigenetic, despite scientific evidence to the contrary). In light of this tendency, it shouldn’t come as much of a shock that their knowledge of canine biology is equally sub-par.
That said, this isn’t at its core an intellectual issue, one that can be resolved by appeals to reason and logic. It is an emotional one, bringing to my mind one of my favorite essays by the great philosopher Voltaire:
Bring the same judgment to bear on this dog which has lost its master, which has sought him on every road with sorrowful cries, which enters the house agitated, uneasy, which goes down the stairs, up the stairs, from room to room, which at last finds in his study the master it loves, and which shows him its joy by its cries of delight, by its leaps, by its caresses.
Barbarians seize this dog, which in friendship surpasses man so prodigiously; they nail it on a table, and they dissect it alive in order to show the mesenteric veins. You discover in it all the same organs of feeling that are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the means of feeling in this animal, so that it may not feel? Has it nerves in order to be impassible? Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in nature.
The dog is sentenced to die at 1 PM today. If you wish to visit the Facebook page chronicling his plight, you can do so here.