If there’s any act more flagrantly repellent to mainstream sensibilities than bestiality, I’d like to know what it is, ‘cause I’ll write an article about it. OK, maybe child sexual slavery or racially motivated crimes involving chains and pickup trucks, but that’s about it. Aside from those banner-grabbing atrocities, bestiality pretty much takes the cake, eats it, and belches. I will state for the record that I am an animal-lover to a degree which at its worst borders on a mental disorder and which at the very least is sort of gay and embarrassing. However, I am not sexually attracted to any beasts of the field, nor any domestic ones for that matter. I have never engaged in penetrative sex, whether aggressive or receptive, with any creature that could not at least vocalize the names of its parents. There was the incident when, at age fourteen and comically horny, I unsuccessfully tried to get my brother’s dachshund to blow me, but I’ve written about that elsewhere, so I think I’ve atoned for that. But apart from that regrettable blot on my otherwise spotless record of high ethics and clean living, I have never touched an animal’s genitals nor had mine touched by one, unless it was accidentally. So although I cannot empathize with the sort of person variously referred to as a zoophile, a bestialist, or a zoosexual in terms of carnal aesthetics and personal predilections, I will, like the bold, fact-digging, swashbuckling journalist that I am, attempt to understand the arguments both in support of and against the lifestyle, especially as it relates to me, because in the end, it all comes back to me. MAN HAS BEEN FUCKING ANIMALS since before the dawning of history, and it seems that as soon as he was able to chisel two words onto stone, he started writing about fucking animals. A 10,000- year-old Italian cave painting clearly shows a man with a full-on raging bone-bone standing behind a doe. Swedish wood carvings from three millennia ago depict various tawdry acts between humans and other mammals. The ancients speak of “sacred goats” servicing Egyptian women while Egyptian men did the “Crocodile Rock”; of monkeys and baboons trained to show a good time to Middle Eastern clients; and of beasties ranging from giraffes to cheetahs copulating with unwilling women and children in the Roman circuses. The Old Testament, however, mandates the death penalty to any man who “lies with a beast,” and the tradition continued into the Middle Ages, where male beast-fuckers, female “witches,” and all of their hapless animal victims were burned at the stake for bumpin’ uglies. In modern America, nearly all states have laws which forbid human-sexual contact—either outright or at least in cases involving cruelty. Extending from ancient times into the present, the reasoning behind such prohibitions rested on the idea that humans were inherently superior to animals and thereby soiled themselves by engaging in sexual congress with lower life forms. It wasn’t until very recently that anyone gave a fuck about the animals’ feelings in all this. Pornographic depictions of bestiality have come a long way from the cave paintings. With little effort, the enquiring mind is able to view “Hot Zoo Porn” where naked human nymphs suck off pachyderms and dry-hump four-foot horse cocks. And my recent visit to pro-bestiality message board beastforum. com (it was for research purposes only, although I shouldn’t have to tell you that) revealed they’d hosted 598 unique visitors within the past twenty minutes. BESTIALITY’S OPPONENTS will trot out an impressively nauseating toilet-paper-roll-length list of man’s sexual inhumanity to nonhumans: Nazi soldiers forcing Jewish women to hump dogs; chicken-fuckers who rip off the fowl’s head at the moment of orgasm because it enhances their climax when the bird’s anus spasms; horse testicles ripped from their owners; and little baby monkeys who will never know the rewards of a meaningful, nurturing physical relationship with a member of their own species. Whenever they mention a case of human-animal sexual contact, it is within the implicit framework that the human assaulted the animal. They will tell you, and I quote, “Not all cases of animal sexual abuse will involve physical injury to the animal, but all sexual molestation of an animal by a human is abuse.” They reason that an animal can in no way consent to a sexual act in the full, overwrought, drippingwith- meaning manner in which humans typically approach it. At every turn, they will compare zoophilia to pedophilia. They will also eagerly exploit deep-rooted stereotypes of zoophiles, depicting them as disturbed, ugly, maladjusted sexual predators engaging in unnatural acts which threaten to crumble our civilization to the point where there will be no more cell phones, convenience stores, or homespun spaghetti dinners at the local firehouse. And above all else, they will appeal to the innate distaste shared by an estimated 95-99% of our population which declares that human-animal sex-play is intensely icky. THE DEFENDERS OF BESTIAL RELATIONS point out that the American Psychiatric Association no longer classifies sheep-schtuppers as inherently disturbed. They’ll guide you to recent studies suggesting that zoophilia is a legitimate sexual orientation just like homosexuality. They assert that not only aren’t humans degraded by interactions of any sort with animals, they might actually learn a thing or two from them about honor and nobility. They’ll argue that consent is evident in the Chihuahua who humps your leg...or the mare who doesn’t kick out your teeth when you vaginally penetrate her...or the German Shepherd who doesn’t rip out your throat when you assay a hand job on him. And they’ll remind you, even though you really would prefer not to think about these things, that they always make sure the animal has an orgasm, too. They’ll argue that it’s no worse to vaginally penetrate a cow than to corral her into a slaughterhouse, murder her, and eat her. In fact, they’d argue it’s far better, at least as far as the cow is concerned, to eat her out rather than to eat her. “We seek to reach a state close to full equality with our animals,” states one zoophile’s manifesto. Starryeyed sanctimony abounds in the literature of bestialist self-justification. Animal-human sex, despite its rancid odor, somehow conjures an Edenic wonderland that radiates spiritual purity to these folks. Zoophiles are eager to distinguish themselves from abusive “zoosadists” who either actively torture animals or show little interest in committing to long-term, mutually supportive relationships with them. They also caution against sex with smaller animals, since the heightened plug-to-socket ratio increases the possibility of pain for the creature. But if some lonely biochemist wants to go snorkeling and fuck a blue whale, will the animal really be any worse for wear and tear? FOR KENNETH PINYAN, SIZE DEFINITELY MATTERED. He made worldwide headlines in 2005 after being horse-fucked to death at a farm in rural Enumclaw, WA. The act was videotaped, as were hundreds of hours of similar acts that transpired before police raided the farm in the wake of Pinyan’s colon-popping ass-murder. But according to a brief snippet of videotape which I had the soul-scalding displeasure to witness, at least the horse, an Arabian stallion named “Bullseye,” shot a hearty dollop of cum and presumably achieved some measure of physical satisfaction from the tragedy. Officials noted that the horse was not harmed during the incident. They were also befuddled about exactly how to proceed legally, because at the time Washington had no anti-bestiality laws. Because I am a being who possesses a rare form of highly advanced morality, I cast no judgments on Kenneth Pinyan nor anyone who has non-coercive, non-abusive sex with other vertebrates. Although I personally deem such acts to be both highly repugnant and extremely funny, I have ascended through enough tiers on the karmic plane that I withhold making juvenile condemnations of people I’ve never met and whose actions did not affect me. I will, however, say this: Although my twenty-pound dog has an extremely tight pussy, if anyone made the slightest sexual advance toward her, I would slay them as if they were a beast of the field. In 1991, Englishman Alan Cooper, 38, was charged with “committing a lewd, obscene, and disgusting act on the 12-foot dolphin called Freddie as they frolicked for 20 minutes off the harbor mouth at Amble, Northumberland.” Cooper allegedly jacked off the cetacean within plain view of a boatload of horrified onlookers. He also heads a dolphin-rights organization called “Cetacean Defence UK.” In 1999, Maine resident Frank Buble, 71, attacked and severely beat his son Philip, 44, with a crowbar while the latter was showering. Philip had come “out” as a “zoophile” and depicted the attack as a “bias crime.” Frank Buble was sentenced to eight years in prison. Philip unsuccessfully attempted to have the dog, named “Lady,” attend the trial, even writing a letter boasting both his signature and Lady’s paw print. In 1991, a British tabloid called The Sunday Sport reported that a married couple in Turkey divorced after the sexually dissatisfied wife discovered her husband having intimate relations with a mule on their farm named “Muffin.” The husband, 55-year-old Husamettin Karacek, kept the mule and commented, “it’s beautiful and does not nag.”