Posted on 12/07/2002 5:03:15 PM PST by ijcr
In last month's policy document on sex crimes, Protecting the Public, David Blunkett wrote: "Sexual activity between people of the same sex is generally recognised to be profoundly disturbed behaviour. A new offence will criminalise those who sexually penetrate members of their own sex or allow themselves to be penetrated by them. This will carry a maximum two years' imprisonment."
Oh, all right, I made that up. He didn't say any such thing. In fact, this Government thinks that homosexual activity is perfectly respectable - as witness yesterday's announcement by Barbara Roche, the minister for social exclusion and equalities, that she was minded to extend the rights enjoyed by married couples to gay men, lesbians and bisexuals.
What Mr Blunkett actually wrote in Protecting the Public was that sexual activity with animals was generally recognised to be profoundly disturbed behaviour, and that bestiality should carry a two-year prison sentence. Odd, you may think, that the Government should want an activity that it regards as a symptom of mental illness to remain a criminal offence. Mighty odd, too, that it should come down so hard on one form of unnatural sexual activity, while getting all dewy-eyed about another.
When I say "unnatural", I do not mean to be offensive to homosexuals. I am sure that the urge to make love to members of their own sex comes as naturally to them as a heterosexual man's desire to bed Claudia Schiffer. All I mean is that both active homosexuals and bestialists (or "zoosexuals", as apparently they prefer to be known) use their genital organs for a purpose other than the natural one for which they were clearly designed, to make babies. Plenty of heterosexuals do unnatural things to each other, too, in this sense of the word.
I am now going to shock many readers by saying that I do not really understand why bestiality should be a criminal offence, separate from the crime of inflicting cruelty on animals. We are allowed to kill a sheep, stuff it with garlic and rosemary, put it in the oven at gas mark five and eat it with mint sauce. Why should we not be allowed to indulge in a little discreet sexual hanky-panky with it, as long as it is done strictly in private and causes no distress to the animal? Ask a sheep if it would rather be roasted or rogered, and I suspect that it would grit its teeth and opt for the latter.
The law assumes that animals are amoral creatures, and therefore incorruptible. The question of consent does not arise. So the only reason for outlawing the practice, on moral grounds, is that it corrupts and degrades the person who engages in it. There is another reason, of course, which is that millions of voters, myself included, find the idea of bestiality pretty disgusting. But then there are also a great many people who find the idea of homosexual intercourse distasteful.
By sucking up to the one group and damning the other, the Government is using the Statute Book not as a means of promoting justice, but rather as an instrument for instructing us on what we should think. It wants us to share New Labour's enthusiasm for homosexuality, and its horror of bestiality. I cannot see much logic there, although it is surely no coincidence that the gay lobby makes an awful lot of noise, and the zoosexuals keep an understandable silence.
I have no objection in principle to "gay marriage" - although I shall stick to my fuddy-duddy view, while the law allows me to, that the only proper marriages can be between men and women. I have two sets of dear gay friends who have been in very long-term relationships that would put most heterosexual couples to shame in the love-and-loyalty stakes. I have always regarded them as being sort-of married, but not quite - and a civic certificate is not going to change my mind.
It is only fair that they should be allowed to nominate their partners as their next of kin, and I have been talked out of my objection to their being allowed to leave their property to each other, free of tax.
The answer to that is that inheritance tax should be abolished for everyone. People who know about these things tell me that the tax costs more to collect than it raises for the Treasury, once you have factored in the elaborate avoidance measures adopted by the rich. It would be a scandal if my two sisters, who have lived together all their lives and bring up my niece together, had to pay inheritance tax on their bequests to each other, while homosexual couples escaped it, for no better reason than that they have a sexual interest in each other, while my sisters have not.
But I do foresee difficulties with Mrs Roche's plans for "gay marriage". Some people will get hitched only as a joke, or for tax reasons, or to secure visas and work permits to which they would not otherwise be entitled. Few are going to take gay marriage as seriously as the real thing. Many gays who enter into it will find that marriage is much more about responsibilities than about rights and, when they realise that they were better off out of it, they will simply walk away. The same is true of many heterosexual couples, of course, but it will be even easier to walk out on a "marriage" that is not widely seen as a proper one.
But, hey, let's give it a whirl. All I ask is that the Government should show a little consistency, and allow people to marry sheep, too, if they fancy the idea. And now, after my merry romp through everybody's finer feelings, I shall lay down my pen … and await next week's letters with dread.
This is patently false from the public health perspective (the real reason for the law). There are any number of STDs that originated because of human contact with other species. This article makes a moral argument assuming no other basis and therefore relies upon a false premise.
You could ask your friends to stop by and have a cold one...
Hmmmmmmm........
A cowboy saunters toward the door of a saloon. He sees an Indian there with a sheep, a dog, and a horse.
"Mind if I speak to your horse?" he asks the indian.
"Horse no talk."
"Hey horse, how's it going?"
"Fine," replies the horse.
"Indian treating you OK? Got enough food and so on?"
"No complaints here." Then he asks if he can talk to the dog.
"Dog no talk," says the indian.
"Hi there, dog, how ya doin'?"
"I'm doing fine."
"Indian treating you OK?"
"Sure. I like him."
"You getting enough food? Exercise?"
"Uh huh."
The cowboy then says to the indian, "Can I talk to your sheep?"
"Sheep heap big liar," says the indian.
Old (I think).
--Boris
Elaborate, please.
I just love the command of the English language they use across the pond. Roger that?
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