At our County Council meeting last night we heard an empathetic, passionate appeal to the audience’s emotions as the members of the local Humane Society pled to have a Standard Operating Procedure adopted at the local animal shelter – because “too many animals are being killed.”
Words like “killed”, “euthanized”, “uncivilized”, “inhumane”, and even “holocaust” were used – all to refer to the practice of putting down animals who are not adopted.
Setting aside the issue that a Standard Operating Procedure is a common-sense idea that should have been implemented years ago (and it did pass last night), I was blown away by the overkill of the Humane Society members (no pun intended).
Three things I wonder:
1. What is the difference between killing for population control and killing for food?
I would be very interested to know how many of those Humane Society members are vegetarians. They all protest killing a bunch of dogs – why aren’t they protesting outside Cousin Eddie’s chicken farm? Why aren’t they protesting at the Outback Steakhouse?
And if anyone thinks that our slaughter methods are any more humane than the mass execution methods used at the animal shelter, they are dead wrong (again, no pun intended). These animals don’t even get a proper burial – they end up between slices of bread. Oh, the humanity!
2. Has our society forgotten the difference between the value of animals and humans?
Have we forgotten how to say “It’s just a dog!”? I love animals too – in fact our family adopted a wonderful dog from that very animal shelter. I don’t rejoice in needless taking of animal life, but I do realize that a certain amount is just a part of existence. Strays can be a real problem, and there are times when it’s far more merciful to put an animal down.
However, animals don’t have spirits. They are not created in the image of God, and their existence is at our pleasure. There’s a balance, of course. Scripture says that “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast”, but Scripture also tells us to take dominion over the earth and subdue it. Exercising our dominion mandate should not involve cruelty, but it may involve killing. And that’s okay.
3. If the passion for the animals existed for the unborn, could we abolish abortion?
One of the Humane Society members said “It’s been said that you can judge a society by how it treats its most defenseless members.” The members went to great lengths to describe the cry of the poor little animals that we would all hear if they could only voice it.
Our most defenseless members are not animals – it’s the unborn babies, cradled in the wombs of their mothers, without a voice or a defense against the whims of politicians or the knife of the executioner. This, ladies, is uncivilized, cruel, inhumane – where is your passion for this?
As my brother Jonathon pointed out, if those babies could be heard, the thunder of their cries would completely drown out the whimper of the animals.
One last point:
To compare the killing of animals to the systematic killing of the Jewish people under the regime of Hitler is completely irresponsible. There is no comparison. It’s cruel to the innocent victims of the true holocaust to trivialize it in this manner. It’s a shocking indicator of someone’s true priorities that they would use the term “holocaust” to describe animal population control, and the lady woman who did it needs to apologize.