Bestiality Dustup in Ohio Legislature: Animal Welfare Ignored

Ohio State Representative Jay Goyal has introduced legislation that would make sex with animals a felony in Ohio, the state that tried to throw teens in Juvie for “sexting.” Goyal’s outrage stems from a May case in which a 31-year-old Ohio man named Peter Bower was alleged to have had sex with three pet dogs (that appear to have been his pets…the NY Daily News doesn’t mention that, as it doesn’t seem to matter to them.)

In the Ohio case, something that is arguably (arguably — I don’t plan to argue it) harmful to animals is presented by the local press (earlier in June) and then as the New York Daily News (yesterday) as an animal welfare issue and as “perversion” — but the “ultimate fate” of the individual animals themselves is not once mentioned, which reveals, to me, that the outrage is not about animal welfare at all. It’s once again about legislators, reporters and residents being grossed out. In this case that fact is even more outrageously obvious than in the recent Florida case, because the question of what specific physical harm befell these animals is never once addressed.

I was tipped off to this by the ever-reliable New York Daily News, which displays its classic “balanced” tone (that’s my sarcastic voice):

Activists are pushing Ohio lawmakers to make bestiality a felony in the wake of allegations a Shelby man had sex with three pet dogs, and possibly a horse.

Police say a search of his home turned up photos of him having sex with animals, as well as stories he posted online about his perverted acts.

Authorities also discovered a book about bestiality, “Dearest Pet,” along with a plastic, blowup sheep, KAIT 8 News reported.

Despite the severity of what they found, police could only charge the 31-year-old with the two misdemeanors.

Ohio does not have any laws specifically dealing with bestiality, something one resident hopes to change.

“If this had been a child, there would have been an uproar about it,” Joyce Fields told the Mansfield News Journal. “There isn’t much difference because this pet didn’t accept or consent to what he was doing. That makes it wrong.”

[Link.]

Before I go any further, I have to say that it’s a little hard not to laugh at the blow-up sheep as “evidence.”

But I can’t laugh. Here’s what bugs me most: From the NY Daily News article, I have no indication one way or another whether the indivdiual animals were physically harmed or killed — a fact the NY Daily News doesn’t even bother to pose as a question.

And what happened to the dogs involved after they passed out of Bower’s stewardship? Are the authorities putting these dogs to sleep, putting them up for adoption, or what? You’re telling me that to the NY Daily News, the fact that man had sex with the dogs is more important than whether the dogs have been impounded by Animal Control — and whether they will be destroyed!!?

I’m sorry, but if you’re an animal lover hopped up enough about bestiality to demand new legislation, doesn’t that even fucking occur to you!?!?

Or are no-kill shelters just not important, because they don’t involve shutting down some “weird” sexual actsomeone else is doing?

Speaking of that issue, incidentally, I have to observe that the New York Daily News refers to “perverted acts,” taking a self-righteous tone I would never take, which I just feel obligated to mention. I may not approve of what Bower did, but I object to it on animal-consent grounds…not on the grounds that it was “perverted.”

The use of such terms to describe these cases, especially when no conviction has been obtained, grotesquely prejudices public opinion against a person who hasn’t been convicted of something. This is a fundamental flaw in the news-legal axis, one of particularly problematic nature when it comes to sexual cases, especially ones concerning highly uncommon sexual variations, regardless of whether they are criminal or not. That “alleged” thing is not an issue that can be addressed here, nor would I expect the New York Daily News to be the place that upholds a journalistic standard above and beyond the standards of the industry.

But what’s even more upsetting to me is Fields’ assertion that “If this had been a child, there would have been an uproar about it.”

Is that right, Ms. Fields? Is that right? You’re sure of it? Is fields a trained social worker? Does she have any idea just how many times cases of child sexual abuse are hushed up, or how rape victims are shamed, or how much damage is done to the child victims of sexual abuse once they are “in the system”? Does she really believe the social services system in Ohio is sufficient to deal with child sexual abuse…and that battle’s been fought and won?

Or is she just particularly grossed out by the idea of a guy who has sex with dogs…so that’s where she and the likes of Goyal decided to “make some progress”?

Things get even more transparently anti-sex when we go to the source, Ohio’s Mansfield News-Journal. Here’s some of the truly disturbing reasoning that’s being used to create new laws for our Ohio brethren to be governed by:

Thirty states have laws prohibiting bestiality, distinct from other forms of animal cruelty. Ohio is not one of them.

“Right now, we’re in the process of doing some research and drafting the legislation. We’re taking a look at what other states have done and then going from there,” Goyal said. “This is the first time I’ve ever encountered anything of this nature. But this legislation needs to be done to prevent horrendous crimes like this from taking place.”

State Sen. Kris Jordan said he, too, had never encountered such a case.

“I can’t ever recall any legislation coming up where we’ve dealt with it,” he said. “It’s pretty obscure and repulsive, and I think people just never imagined something like this taking place.”

[Link.]

To my way of thinking, the extreme rarity of something is not an argument for creating wide-ranging legislation; it’s an argument for spending valuable legislative time on fixing the economy and stuff like that.

Anyway, here’s where it gets really disturbing both to the legislators and to me, for different reasons:

According to a search warrant, on May 19, authorities confiscated numerous items from the Shelby man’s apartment, including books on bestiality, a plastic blow-up sheep, photos of the man with animals, sex toys, several cameras, film and computers.

Richland County Dog Warden Dave Jordan also took the man’s dog. A veterinarian said the shepherd mix had vaginal bruising.

Incidentally, this is the only instance of any animal harm being mentioned. I am not a veterinarian and have no idea what “vaginal bruising” means. I don’t know if that, for instance, could be seen to be typical in consensual sex with humans. What’s far worse is that it’s not mentioned if the vaginal bruising was discovered by an examination of the animal or what the disposition of the animal is going to be. Will this dog be destroyed? That’s very common in the case of animals confiscated from people who are arrested. It’s apparently not important to the news.

More from the Mansfield News-Journal:

The man’s personal stories expressed his deep love for animals — which didn’t surprise a neighbor at his complex.

Rosario DeLeon, 41, said after the man adopted the shepherd mix from the Richland County Dog Shelter on May 7, he posted a “Just Married” sign in the back window of his vehicle.

The back bumper of the vehicle is still lined with “I love my German Shepherd” stickers.

“Whenever I’d be outside with my dog, he’d always come out with treats for her, and he always asked if he could walk her — but she was ready to bite his hand off,” DeLeon said. “She wanted nothing to do with him. I told him no, and then he offered to train her. He said he could post her progress on the Internet and said people would post comments and suggestions about how to train her, and I thought that was so weird. I told him I couldn’t afford that, and he said he’d do it all for free.”

She said once she tried to sell him a male shih tzu she had been sitting for, whose owner never returned for him.

“He told me he was only interested in female dogs,” DeLeon said.

DeLeon said neighbors watched as authorities removed item after item May 19. When they discovered why, DeLeon said she was glad she trusted her instinct.

“He is a sick man and ought to be locked up. I can’t believe there is no law that prohibits bestiality,” she said. “He walks around here now like it’s no big deal.”

Jordan said the man had advertised dog walking and sitting services around Shelby and at the Mansfield dog shelter.

“I had a lady who called me today in tears because she had used his dog walking services before and said her dog had been acting funny afterward, and now she doesn’t know what to do,” Jordan said Thursday after the News Journal broke the story.

[Link.]

Now, if the accused was *also* having sex with other peoples’ pets, that’s pretty fucked. It is in property terms a crime against the pet’s “owner,” and in moral terms a violation of the animal, since it would, in my mind, establish a pattern of predation.

But the News Journal doesn’t establish that this guy did anything with the dog belonging to this “lady.” My dog acts funny all the time, and I swear to God nobody has ever had sex with him or ever will! This third-hand story doesn’t even begin to reach the level of “fact” that would be implied by calling it a “panic.” The attempt to whip up hysteria and draw parallels to child abuse is transparent. The burden of proof has been entirely dispensed with; we go from “This guy loved his dogs” to “he was sick,” without suggesting that there is any disconnect between those two. What’s more, the welfare of the animals is only discussed insofar as they were presumed to have been sexually violated — in the news there is no establishment that harm was done to these animals, other than the incredibly vague “vaginal bruising” described.

And yet the fate of that dog that suffered the vaginal bruising is, apparently, not the concern of either the news or, as the news presents them, the accused’s neighbors. Nobody cares what happens to them now…put to sleep? Whatever. They’d been fucked. That’s sick.

The moral panic against bestiality trumps all other concerns about animal welfare. It becomes a crusade because of the squick factor; any actual concern for animals is lost in the white noise.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it happened recently in the Florida legislature. The rest of us in our oh-so-civilized non-Florida states only found out about it because some pedantic science blogger decided to pretend that because humans are animals, by banning sex with animals Florida banned sex (an assertion that many legal commentators said was patently ridiculous).

On my earlier article about the Florida case, a Tiny Nibbles reader took exception with my comment that the man in case (who accidentally strangled a family’s pet goat — not his own — while having sex with it) would have been within the moral rights, as seen by Florida legislators, if he had slaughtered the goat with a knife and eaten it. Then it would have been a simple case of larceny.

The commenter observed that surely strangulation during sex would not have been “allowed” under the laws governing animal welfare, as there were laws governing humane slaughter in Florida.

That claim was, as best I can tell, entirely erroneous, and an oft-repeated argument for things like anti-bestiality legislation not being that big a deal.

In fact, as some very half-assed research into the meat industry can tell you, the laws around slaughter are oriented almost entirely toward human health, not animal suffering, or the much larger discussion around an animal’s ability (or not) to consent.

What’s more — and far more important — is that what Michael Vick did is far more likely to be a symbol or symptom of a wide-ranging societal problem of violence-for-sport than is sex with animals per se. There is no demonstrated connection whatsoever between sex with animals and sexual predation on humans. But there is a recurrently demonstrated tendency in criminology for serial killers and other predators to begin their “careers” by torturing and killing animals, sometimes in the context of “fights.” And apparently, even though Michael Vick still has a career, that’s less important to lawmakers than how gross it is to screw dogs.

People who do things that intentionally harm animals for their own pleasure are doing a dangerous thing, assuming you take completely out of the argument things like killing a cow so you can enjoy gustatory pleasure — that is, a steak. People who have sex with animals, consensually or non-consensually, have never, to my knowledge, been shown convincingly to progress to doing any particular thing to humans.

What’s more, I don’t trust the legislature of any state to make that distinction, divorced from their own obviously small-minded need to make laws about corner cases because those corner cases involve what are, to those legislatures, revolting sexual practices.

You’re telling me someone who (allegedly) injures an animal by having sex with it will have a new law written to punish them more severely…but someone who facilitates a dog getting injured in a staged dog fight for money shouldn’t be?

That’s a shitty way to run a country, and a shitty way to run a state — red, blue, or purple. And it’s sure as hell a shitty way to run a society.

Image: Daniel Radcliffe with horse in controversial Broadway play Equus (For Radcliffe fans, full frontal of the image is here).