http://blog.mlive.com/minorityreport/2008/09/sheep_molester_not_a_sex_offen.html
First things first: I have no idea how someone can find an animal sexually attractive. Personally I find the idea of engaging in sexual activity with an animal to be repulsive. But then again I don't know how a man can find another man sexually attactive and I find the idea of homosexual sex repulsive. So rather than making random judgements on who to condemn and who not to, I make a conscious decision not to condemn those different from me and who have attractions I don't understand. It's not always an easy approach to take but centuries of homophobia was based on bigots making value judgements using their own sexual attractions as the only acceptable model and condemning anyone different and I'm not keen to join the ranks of the bigots.
So, having said that I come to the point of the push to include this man on a sex offender register. What is the point of a sex offender register? The official reason is to highlight men and women who may potentially pose a sexual threat to others. Others argue that its purpose is to marginalise those with attractions alternative to the mainstream in the same way different people have been marginalised based on race, religion and sexuality throughout the ages. I personally believe the true intentions are a combination of both. Regardless, unless sheep read sex offender registers, I don't see the point of including people such as this on a register. After all, its not even decided yet if it's possible to rape a sheep. Does the issue of consent even come into play when an animal is involved? Do those who consider sex with an animal to be rape also consider the killing of an animal to be murder? It seems a bit odd that we consider it fine to kill a a sheep but abominable to shag one.
The obvious approach should be one of protecting animals from cruelty. If the action of shagging an animal hurts it, the offender should be charged under animal welfare legislation and treated in accordance with the law. This is entirely reasonable. Placing people on sex offender registers may conform with their marginalising purpose but certainly doesn't meet their other alleged purpose of protecting the public.
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4 comments:
Nice article. I could never understand why we have a mandatory registry for people who commit sex crimes but not for people who commit murder. Kinda makes you wonder what it's really all about.
I agree. The standard argument in favour of registers is that they alert us to those in the community who pose a potential risk to our safety yet they only include sex offenders. Surely we're at far greater risk from those who've committed any sort of violent crime (murder, assault, armed robbery, burglary etc), those who take and/or sell drugs, those who drink and drive, and those who commit fraud. Yet for some reason people don't push to have them publically named and included on a register. I'd certainly be interested to hear the reasons for such a huge discrepancy in standards.
well obviously rape is really cruel crime.
I agree with jpelic with this one. There are registry for sex crimes but no registry for murder. Anyway, bestiality is just weird. There are people that are zoosexuals, who think they can consent to animals and animals can consent to it.
It's quite an interesting and strange issue if you think about it. We kill animals for food, but it is wrong to have sex with it. It does make people about it.
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