The death and resurrection of bestiality

Ireland is one of the few countries in Europe that forbids bestiality in the old-fashioned way: as a form of sodomy. Though forced by the European Court of Human Rights to decriminalize homosexuality in 1991, Ireland retains a sodomy law dating back to 1861 that provides a maximum term of life imprisonment for “the abominable crime of Buggery committed either with Mankind or with any Animal.” Just as ancient laws prohibiting rape protected male property rights vested in the fidelity and chastity of wives and daughters, rather than protecting women's rights, sodomy laws were devised long before modern conceptions of animal welfare. Bestiality was a crime against God, not an offence against a sentient being. In fact, the “beast” in bestiality is not the animal involved but the human offender who has “lowered” himself to the level of his sexual partner.

Liberal societies have seemingly moved on from such nonsense. In 1969, the German Bundestag, for example, passed two major reform acts that shifted the basis of laws governing sexual behavior from violation of moral norms to violation of rights. Among the sexual acts thereby legalized was bestiality, which could be prosecuted thereafter only if it caused “significant harm.” Germany was one of many Western nations in which the relationship of private sexual behavior and the law was revolutionized in this period.

The other supposed “crimes against decency” that were taken off the books in those days – masturbation, adultery, homosexuality – have not only stayed legal, but have, in the case of same-sex marriage, been still further legitimized. It is curious to note, then, the rash of laws recriminalizing sexual relations with nonhuman animals since the turn of the millennium: France, 2004; Belgium, 2007; Norway, 2008; Netherlands, 2010. In Germany, bestiality was recriminalized as a misdemeanor in 2012, with a law that prohibits “using an animal for personal sexual activities or making them available to third parties for sexual activities and thereby forcing them to behave in ways that are inappropriate to their species.”