Love Animals. Don't Rape Them.

Washington state has no law against bestiality, but that will probably change. Shockingly, not everybody agrees bestiality should be illegal.

Roach told me she is receiving cooperation from the Democratic leaders of the legislature [to outlaw bestiality-ed.], but to her surprise, the proposed bill has stirred some controversy. The most prominent voice so far against outlawing bestiality is the Seattle Post Intelligencer's liberal columnist, Robert L. Jamieson Jr. In a July 23 column, Jamieson ridiculed Roach's proposal, writing that practices such as masturbation, oral sex, and gay sex were once considered wrong, too, and so why worry now about human/animal copulation if the animal isn't injured? "Human sex with animals remains a towering taboo, booty and the beast. But as Princeton University philosopher Peter Singer, the father of the animal rights movement, has put it, 'Sex with animals does not always involve cruelty.'"

Jamieson may be correct that masturbation, gay sex, et cetera, used to be illegal, or considered wrong, but one difference between gay sex and bestiality is that the former is performed by two consenting adults. A horse or dog or chicken cannot give consent to have sex.

Now, the author of the article, Wesley J. Smith, objects to bestiality because of his belief in “human exceptionalism.” Although I am an agnostic, I too believe in human exceptionalism. I think most humans do as well, even if they deny it and argue that humans are animals no different than any other animal.

Smith continues:

This concept is taught in most of our major colleges and universities. Similarly, the animal liberation movement claims that it is the ability to feel pain, rather than humanhood, which bestows equal moral value. "We are all animals," a PETA advocacy slogan asserts, by which they are not merely stating a biological fact but espousing an explicit moral equality between man and beasts.

If you, dear reader, ever end up in a debate with a PETA type on this very topic, ask them this: “If you are driving down the road and all of a sudden you see a little girl and a chicken and you have to make a split-second decision to swerve one way or the other—thus killing either the girl or the chicken—which one will you hit?”

If they answer “the chicken” then it’s obvious that they too differentiate between the value of human life over that of other animals. And it makes sense to run-over the chicken instead of the girl. Humans have far more complex brains than do chickens. Humans have hopes and dreams and goals for the future. Chickens do not. Thus, ending the life of a human being prematurely has far greater consequence than ending the life of a delicious chicken.

Read the rest of the article, here.