today in partnership

I started reading this article on Germany banning bestiality thinking that maybe Merkel was pulling a variant of Lyndon Johnson's old 'pigfucker' manouvre. "Where were the Social Democrats when the time came to push for this humane and necessary legislation? In ze barn, perhaps? ' But then I found myself astonished by this chap:

But Michael Kiok, the chairman of the pressure group Zoophile Engagement for Tolerance and Information (Zeta), said he was going to take legal action to fight the proposed changes.

"It is unthinkable that any sexual act with an animal is punished without proof that the animal has come to any harm," he said, adding that animals are capable of showing what they do, or do not, want to do.

"We see animals as partners and not as a means of gratification. We don't force them to do anything. Animals are much easier to understand than women," Mr Kiok claimed.

Needless to say I do not endorse this message. I am concerned a little for Mr Kiok's welfare if the other Zetas get to hear about his group. I'm not too sure that the Mexican cartel sense of humour stretches that far.

Comments

[Malcs]

The Graun version of that report had more choice quotations from Mr Kiok, including something to the effect that he had gone through years of therapy for his zoophilia before discovering through the medium of the internet how many other people were like him. He had found this affirming.

[magistra]

Necrophilia and bestiality only became specific offences in the UK in 2004 when Labour were tidying up old sexual offences laws. As a historian friend of mine commented, people in a few hundred years' time are going to wonder why there was sudden panic about necrophilia in early C21 Britain.

[john b]

I like the concept, but I doubt it - SOA2003 was such a comprehensive remaking of all E&W sexual offences law that a future historian would only be able to conclude either:

1) following a complete sea-change in societal attitudes to almost all aspects of sexual behaviour, the law was changed from its previous puritan-patriarchal position to focus almost solely on informed consent; or:

2) the early 2000s saw a massive uptick in public panic about man-rape, corpse-rape, donkey-rape, object-rape and people persuading kids to strip for them.

[Phil]

Indeed - and the stress on informed consent (die, Morgan, die!) and the final removal of the marital exemption tend to support 1), as does the legalisation of anal sex. (True story: a friend of my mother's once told her about what a brute her husband had turned out to be. This being the 1950s, there wasn't much more my mother could say other than "You poor thing" - suing for divorce would get you nowhere, and as for 'just walking out', where would you walk to? Until, that is, it came out that the guy had not only beaten and raped her but raped her anally. "Oh, he can't do that," my mother said, having studied the criminal law a bit when she was younger. The friend sued for divorce and got it.)

[Malcs]

The B&T maternariat's stories of the 1950s could make for a fascinatingly grim historical long form TV drama. I'm pretty sure we could get HBO interested.