Anyone know of Dr. Martha-Smith Blackmore? I am curious why she is such an outspoen person on this.

Also, those stats on sexual abusers and animal sex seem familiar. Are they from that study of criminal sex offenders?

I love the FBI-CSI feel to the article. It's effective at dehumanizing.

She believes all veterinarians should receive training on how to identify when an animal has been sexually abused, which can be difficult, especially if the animal is examined too long after the alleged incident.

All thats gonna do is make zoos and animal abusers think twice about taking their mate/pet to the vet. Instead of preventing harm this is just going to increase animal suffering.

As a zoo, imagine you jizz on your dog in an evening of excitement, but then the next day dog gets their stomach twisted. you've got to take dog to the vet, but the chance of dog being taken away and you being charged with a serious offence are real and present. What would you do?

Thats not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious.

The Vermont "Fact Sheet" is a little annoying to me, since I would like to someday head there. That said, the article's facts about the animal abuse link, as well as many of their other facts, were demonstrably wrong or dishonestly stated. Here's a partial list of their screwups (nothing about values, just bad arguments)

Supporters of the measure contend that 20 percent of children who sexually abuse other children first abused animals.

WARNING: This is pretty graphic, so feel free to skip it.

The statistic cited appears to come from this sheet, which cited a paper by Duffield et al called "Zoophilia in Young Sexual Abusers." Here are the relevant facts from that paper:

• 70 case reports from a center for young abusers were examined. Of these, 7 were identified as having committed a sexual act with an animal, with another 7 admitting to other nonsexual cruelty to animals.

• Of the seven zoophilic cases, four had some form of learning disability.

• Here are the animal-activities of the seven cases described in this paper:

• Referred for kissing and licking the butthole of his dog, later admitted to sexual abuse by his father involving dogs. Also was physically cruel to his mother's pets.

• 3-year history of sexual activity with his mother's dog, including penetration and oral.

• Forced the dog to lick his genitals and forced his sister to watch.

• Preoccupations with dead animals, which he mutilated and whose parts he put in his mouth.

• Undisclosed sexual activity with dogs, as well as attempting to place his penis in the dog's mouth.

• Masturbating with the dog.

• The dog licks potato chips off his penis.

Six of the seven cases described involve some form of sexual contact with animals, three of which involved getting the dog to lick the genitals and one of which involved simply masturbation near the dog. The claim that seven cases involve sexual abuse of animals is dubious at best.

• All of the cases described involved histories of being victimized by physical or sexual abuse (or at least, allegations of the kind).

In short, the 20% number comes from taking all cases involving abuse to animals whether sexual or not (14) and dividing by the number of case histories examined (70). (Edit: As it turns out, a naive margin of error calculation shows a margin of error larger than the 20%, due to the small sample size, making this number hard to take seriously without more explanation). Seven of these are actually zoophilic to some extent, and of those one involved physical cruelty other than sex, one involved forcing someone else to watch, and three involve relatively minor forms of sexual experimentation like potato chips and use of the animal as a masturbation aid. At most three of these cases involve an undeniable sexual abuse of animals without any other crime, meaning that the number that should be cited in this argument is more like 4-10%. The Duffield article even spells this out in its results section:

Zoophilic behaviors were found in 10% of children referred to a tertiary center for young sexual abusers.

That highlights another problem with this argument, which the next quote has in common.

Among juveniles who engage in sex with animals, 96 percent admit also to sexually abusing people and report more offenses than other sexual offenders of their same age and race.

The title of the article from which this statistic is gleaned (by Fleming et al) is "Characteristics of Juvenile Offenders Admitting to Sexual Activity with Nonhuman Animals". Note the word "offenders", because it highlights the sample population here: youths in juvenile detention. There were 381 offenders, of whom 24 (6%) admitted to sexual contact with animals. It's true that 23 of the 24 (or 96%, plus or minus 19% given the small numbers here) admitted to sexual abuse of people, but another 161 also admitted to sex offenses against people. This was a 1 in 8 chance that someone who sexually assaulted people did, at some point, also have sexual experiences with an animal.

However, the main problem with both this and the Duffield study is that they work backwards from the worst case scenarios. They find sexually abusive or criminal youths, find a background of animal sexual contact in their histories, and conclude that the animal sexual contact had something to do with their criminality. The establishment of such a link, particularly in cases of (arguably) nonabusive contact with animals, requires some knowledge of the total population of zoophiles, in order to get some idea on the prevalence of sexual abuse of humans in that population vs. in the general public. Barring that, no amount of horror stories will tell me that loving contact with dogs or horses has anything to do with sexual sadism towards humans or animals.

A tagline on the Vermont legislation's talking points speaks to the topic's taboo nature: "We don't need to talk about it. We just need to outlaw it."

Yes, because changing laws without any thought as to the consequences works out so well, right? No use making a reasoned consideration, since anyone who would is obviously sick, right?

Bestiality is most commonly found among violent offenders, sex offenders and the sexually abused, she said, and perpetrators may demonstrate a failure to relate to people.

Again, biased samples make it hard to argue this point competently, and as for the "failure to relate to people", one need only read Marion Nasswetter's thesis to know that, at least for the population there, zoophiles are average in terms of their ability to relate to people, according to the ECQ which she used to measure emotional competency.

“In the most recent edition, DSM did not categorize bestiality as a perversion because it was decided that harm to animals is not causing someone harm,” Smith-Blackmore said. “They are human-psychology-centric. It may have been an editorial philosophy.”

Show that all sexual contact is harmful, and I'll agree with this rationalization.

Animal sex farms, which draw customers willing to pay for such activity, exist in many other countries including Denmark, where an underground market reportedly has flourished in response to bestiality bans recently imposed in Norway, Germany and Sweden.

Evidence would be nice.

Sexual contact with animals is banned throughout most of the United States except: Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kentucky, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Vermont, Washington, D.C., West Virginia and Wyoming, according to a listing compiled in 2014 by Michigan State University's Animal Legal & Historical Center.

Of these states, Colorado, Connecticut, and North Dakota have laws on the books (though oddly, Oklahoma has a listed law on wikipedia that apparently no longer exists there). The list was, apparently, sloppily done.

My point is, there is a rush to judgment here with sloppy evidence and sensationalist claims. William Randolph Hearst would be proud.

tin foil hat

This is making me a little bit concerned now that the FBI is more interested in zoophiles, cooperation with the NSA and other agencies makes me worried that zoos living in the USA might be put on a list to be watched further.

Let's hope they're more worried about the "turrorists" than us, although it's possible some of us might be low hanging fruit that they can snatch and make examples of.

"We don't need to talk about it. We just need to outlaw it."... Yup, that's the type of political system the world needs...

I find it hard to believe more and more that these people are really only ignoring everything that goes against their world view by accident. They do claim to be "experts", don't they? They ought to have done their research? They ought to have read the relevant studies? And yet they act as if it was uncontended that every sexual contact between humans and nonhumans is somehow a violent and abusive offense... At some point it must be intentional...

“In the most recent edition, DSM did not categorize bestiality as a perversion because it was decided that harm to animals is not causing someone harm,” Smith-Blackmore said.

"It was decided"? Really? By whom? Can one read about this alleged reasoning anywhere? Because it sounds absurd.

13 mice were euthanized after being found with their tails cut off and string tied around their bodies, which were slathered in petroleum jelly.

Yea, Douglas Spink's case. Supposedly the court has photos of the mice (?). I wonder whether the public ever gets to see them.

Animal sex farms, which draw customers willing to pay for such activity, exist in many other countries including Denmark, where an underground market reportedly has flourished in response to bestiality bans recently imposed in Norway, Germany and Sweden.

Still waiting for any actual investigation of these issues. They could have, I don't know, asked experts in denmark whether this is actually the case. The last time it did not seem like it:

There are repeated reports about the occurrence of organised animal sex shows, clubs and brothels in Denmark. The Council has heard these rumours but has not been able to definitively confirm whether such activities take place in Denmark.

Their only link is http://www.thenewage.co.za/60452-1020-53-Animal_brothels_legal_in_Denmark which says

The law states that doing so is perfectly legal, so long as the animal involved does not suffer any harm, Wordpress.com reports.

Wordpress.com? Without even a link? Seriously? (I'm pretty sure the actual source is not wordpress.com)

These people lobby for laws.

And they base their efforts largely on hearsay.

Hearsay that has been going on for ₁₀ years and still has not produced any significant evidence.

In what world is this okay?

Is it really enough to pretend to be for animal welfare and/or animal rights to get a free pass?

Washington authorities said that Tait helped run an animal sex farm advertised online as a tourist destination.

Tait went on to run a similar animal sex farm in Tennessee.

Sometimes I really wonder why it's so hard to do an informative report on cases. The sources don't even try to ask the question whether any animal was harmed or forced to do anything. And what's so hard to provide an actual source. The source linked only says:

Chandler said he’s investigating whether the farm was being advertised as some sort of bestiality destination — just as happened in the Enumclaw case. Chandler said that detectives have recovered several videotapes of men having sex with animals on the farm.

and

Authorities say they found multiple videos of Tait and Thomason having sex with a variety of the farm's 13 horses,

So it were only the two of them? Or others? How many? It was "advertised"? How and where? And what farm directly? I thought in 2005 they went to a neighbor's farm. Was it that farm that was advertised?

After reading so many news reports about it I realized that I still don't have the faintest idea, what actually happened there.

Why would anyone rely on such shoddy journalism for their arguments?

"Animal-cruelty laws don't necessarily cover (bestiality) unless the animal sustains physical injuries, so you can't necessarily make a case for it.

In other words: "We need a bill with which we can effectively convict you of animal cruelty, even when we have zero evidence that any animal cruelty has happened."

Innocent until proven guilty? Pfff.