No porking pigs!
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Go to jail
The quadruped, feathered, and furry are breathing
easier this month.
No more cruel traps are being set to hunt animals
for their pelts, no
more rabbits are blinded testing eyeliner, and gone
are the factory farms
that forced pigs, chickens, and calves to live short
and brutish lives. So
it seems, anyway, judging by the decision of the
Humane Society of the US
to turn its attention to toughening America's sex
laws.
On February 4th, the HSUS announced a
campaign to criminalize
sex acts between humans and animals in the 28 US
states that it contends
do not specifically outlaw such practices. Many
states eliminated
bestiality statutes when they revamped their sex
laws to allow oral and
anal intercourse.
Ironically, the HSUS is not focusing its
campaign on sex acts
between man and beast that would constitute
cruelty-- anally fucking a dog, say,
to the point of tearing its rectum. All states already
have
anti-cruelty statutes. The HSUS is aiming its guns
instead on inter-species sex
to which no one-- man nor animal-- has uttered,
barked, crowed, or oinked
any objection.
With the combined zeal of right-wing
fundamentalists and
child-savers, the group contends that all sex with
animals is inherently evil.
"Many animal sexual abusers are similar to
pedophiles," says
Kim Roberts, MSW, manager of the HSUS's "First
Strike!" campaign, who, like
so many with deep insight into the human heart,
boasts a Masters Degree
in Social Work. "They'll defend their actions by
stating that their
victims consent."
"The fact is, no child or animal is capable of
consenting to
sexual activity with an adult human being," Roberts
continues, intrigueingly leaving open
the possibility that farm-boy barnyard
sex-play is totally copasetic.
At that contention, Alfred Kinsey, the
famous mid-century sex researcher, wouldn't
blanch. From his data, Kinsey concluded in 1948
that
eight percent of males had engaged in sex with
animals, mostly as youngsters.
A subsequent study, with broader criteria, claimed
that number was
65 percent-- a statistic that the HSUS cites not to
point out the
ordinariness of inter-species sexual shenanigans,
but bestiality's pervasive erosion
of the moral fabric.
The HSUS knows what it wants to do with
these millions of
animal fondlers. The group approvingly cites a
Massachusetts law that
allows prison terms of up to 20 years for bestiality.
The Humane Society
also wants states to impose mandatory counseling
on offenders and ban them
for life from working around animals, and they call
for new efforts to
rid bestiality pictures and Web sites from the
Internet, where a
thriving zoophile scene now exists.
To bolster its case, the HSUS cites cases of
animals killed
or injured after being forced into sex. That may
well be unethical, but is
it worse than slaughtering animals for food in times
and places where
there is no shortage of vegetarian edibles?
Anti-cruelty statutes aren't enough to stop
even violent
sexual attacks on animals, the group maintains,
because they are
sometimes written to exclude creatures raised for
food. Sometimes these
laws disallow prosecutions against individuals who
own the animal they
hurt. But these are arguments for rewriting anti-
cruelty laws, not expanding
the categories of illegal sex.
Such subtleties are lost on the group's
lobbyists, who seek to
stanch discussion of this issue with a favorite tactic
of witch-hunters:
"The only people who would oppose a law against
animal sexual abuse,"
declares the HSUS's Ann Church, Senior Director of
Government Affairs, "are
those abusing the animals." **
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