On Cats, Logic, and the Transgender Day of Remembrance

http://wimminwiselpts.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/on-transgender-day-of-remembrance-10-31-08/
10/31/2008

I have read that in the middle ages in Europe, people actually persecuted cats. [One source: The History of Human-Animal Interaction - The Medieval Period] There was, so I have also read, a religious argument for this cruelty: "cats are the only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible." And since cats weren't mentioned in the Bible, this was taken as evidence that God didn't care about them, that their lives were not blessed. From here, it was a short step to add fear and suspicion of cats to ideas that they were outside the boundaries of God's real concern to produce conviction that persecution was permissible.

"Negative proof" is also the underlying structure of some responses to transgender lives. The word transgender does not occur in the Bible. And that is enough evidence, for some, that transgender lives don't count for God, don't need to count for their neighbors, and don't qualify for the same care and protection demanded by all other human lives.