Posted on 05/07/2015 6:51:15 PM PDT by Coleus
New Jersey has established a broad range of crimes in its 228 years as a state, from making it illegal to wear a bulletproof vest while committing murder to outlawing human cloning.
But somehow having sex with animals slipped under the lawmaking radar.
Many people – legislators included – might have assumed, given the Garden State’s comprehensive set of laws and its reputation for being fairly progressive on social issues, that an almost universally rejected fetish like bestiality must be a crime. “It’s crazy,” said Sen. Christopher “Kip” Bateman. “It’s a flaw in the statute.”
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee cleared a bill to criminalize bestiality.
Sponsored by Bateman, R-Somerset, and Sen. Loretta Weinberg, D-Teaneck, it was spurred in part by a 2006 criminal case involving a police officer who saw his charges of animal abuse dismissed by a judge. If is approved – and there is little reason to think it won’t be – the bill would make it a fourth-degree crime to have sexual contact with an animal or creature, which could mean up to 18 months in jail and a fine of up to $10,000. If the animal or creature dies as a result of the violation, it would be elevated to a third-degree crime – three to five years in jail and a fine of up to $15,000.
Bateman said he isn’t sure how such a bill has gone neglected for so long, even after a bizarre legal case several years ago shed light on the statutory gap. A Superior Court judge had dismissed animal cruelty charges filed against a former Moorestown police officer accused of a sexual act with five cows in Burlington County in 2006. The problem, the judge said, was determining whether the cows were tormented by the acts, as the statute requires.
The man, Robert Melia, along with his girlfriend, Heather Lewis, was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison on more than 20 counts of sexually assaulting four minors between 2000 and 2007. It was during the course of that investigation that prosecutors discovered the animal abuse.
A bill was introduced in the Legislature in 2005 banning bestiality, but it is unclear why it stalled. “I don’t know how often it happens,” Bateman said. “I’d like to believe it doesn’t at all.” Thirty-five other states have laws criminalizing sexual assault of an animal, according to the Michigan State University Animal Legal and Historical Center. Besides New Jersey, the center lists Connecticut as the only other state in the Northeast where bestiality is not a crime.
how islamic...is New Jersey these days!
New Jersey is a liberal, progressive state. So, they’re not about to be judgmental about who or what people prefer for their sex ‘partners’. It’s a matter of choice or freedom of choice, and liberals won’t get in the way. With liberalism, anything goes.
ROFL!
The offensive thing is that these laws used to exist to maintain some decency, but because there can be no morality, now they are passed strictly to protect the animals from assault. Because of course protection of animals is a high calling of the new order. Human morality is not.
So they intend to keep ManBearPig from getting his second Chakra released in New Jersey....
MUZZIES will HATE THAT....
It’s trans-species-ophobia.
Why? It’s only love. Who are we to judge?
I am going to have to borrow that one. I have some A&M friends.
They can’t do that! Depending on the Supreme Court’s decision they could be discriminating against someone’s wife or.............husband
How can the state question who one can love?
(But possession of a "high-capacity" ammunition magazine is a felony.)
OK, but what if the human dies, as happened in the horse-mounts-man case in Washington State? His buddy finally took him to E.R., but it was too late (perforated colon). The victim died very quickly and his friend disappeared(later located)
No one was prosecuted, as I recall, because there was no law against bestiality in the state.
There is one now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumclaw_horse_sex_case
What right does a STATE have in defining relationships?
(how liberals see it)
Don’t be surprised if there’s a mass movement to repeal bestiality laws in 20 years or so - that is who these people are...that simple.
Yeah. That is all fine and good, but what about trees!
Soooo,
sex with animals in New Jersey is a legal practice?
Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.
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