PHOENIX -- Three people -- a husband and wife, and her lover -- have been arrested and charged withconspiracy to commit bestiality.
According to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, deputies arrested Pinal County residents Shane Walker and Sarah Dae Walker and Gilbert resident Robert Aucker Monday night.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said the trio used the popular Craigslist classified ads website to find a dog to take part in the act.We criminalize this act not because it is cruel to animals (it would not have been cruel to the dog--for all I know, he may like blondes), but because our society used to have certain narrow-minded notions of sexuality derived from the now abandoned Judeo-Christian heritage. Senator Santorum was right, back in 2003. There are really only two possible choices when confronting Lawrence v. Texas (2003):
1. We admit that we aren't going to let those moral standards be written into law by the people, in which case, what makes this wrong?
2. We admit that the courts are not abandoning the power of the people to pass laws about sexual behavior--but we make an exception for homosexuality because judges think it deserves a special exemption.
Here's something I don't get. Sheriff Arpaio wants Craigslist to better screen ads like this. Now, first off, this is nearly impossible - Craigslist doesn't actually screen much, but it allows its users to, and if the users don't flag off this kind of ad, why should Craigslist pay someone to wade through thousands of ads per day to find something like this which will pop up once a month or so. (And don't recommend searching - how many people will put something in a normal personal ad about their dog, to make themselves seem more reliable/honest/lovable?)
ReplyDeleteBut here's what really doesn't make sense: craigslist pulls all these creeps to one place, where the good Sheriff can find them easily. If someone sees such an ad, they can call the Sheriff's office, send a link to the ad, and the vice squad (or animal control?) can follow up, using information in the ad. Craigslist does comply with subpeonas, and it shouldn't be too hard to ask for the IP address, email forwarding address, etc., of whoever placed the ad.
It's a small example of the question of prostitution ads in Craigslist - why shut down Craigslist when they're providing you with hundreds of reliable tips every night?
Except Texas legalized bestiality yet still retained its sodomy statute before Lawrence struck it down.
ReplyDeleteYup. And Texas did something even weirder: they repealed a traditional buggery statute (prohibiting bestiality and non-vaginal intercourse regardless of sex of the partners), and replaced it with a ban only on homosexual non-vaginal intercourse. I would love to read the legislative debates on this law. Did they think that there was no bestiality in Texas? In the 1970s, when this law was changed, it is hard to imagine that bestiality supporters were lobbying the legislature for the change.
ReplyDeleteI would have respected Texas more if they had left the law alone, or if they had simply replaced their buggery statute with a bestiality statute. Regardless of the merits of the law, we still come down to this question: if a state can criminalize bestiality because it's "icky," why can't it criminalize other forms of sexual behavior that the state concludes are immoral? If they can't criminalize those other behaviors, why are some okay to criminalize and others are not? There's no consistency on this, and those pushing for overturn of sodomy laws are either consistent and icky (and therefore in support of bestiality), or inconsistent and not-so-icky (opposed to polygamy and bestiality, but insistent that homosexuality should be legal).
The argument for banning bestiality is that an animal can't give consent in a way we recognize. This is not entirely true - some animals (mostly male) have "sexually assaulted" humans in a way which at least indicated they were willing even if their human partner was not - but it's close enough to true that it's rational to ban bestiality.
ReplyDeleteBut we kill animals without consequence, you say. Well, yes. But we also punish people who torture animals, because those acts tell us that the human involved is an evil person, and is likely enough to carry out similar acts on people.
Not allowing polygamy while allowing sodomy and/or homosexual sex is a little different, since given the general "if there's consent, it's ok" mindset of liberals, it's hard to see a good reason to ban polygamy that might not also apply to homosexual sex. After all, the real problem with consensual polygamy is that it creates social evils, and the same argument could be made about homosexuality.
Interestingly, the only place in the U.S. which has a law against a man having more than one female sex partner, rather than more than one wife, is Utah, which bans cohabitation of a man with more than one woman, even if they don't attempt to marry.