In 2014, I conducted a review of state laws prohibiting bestiality [3]. At the time, only 31 states had laws criminalizing behavior, 16 of which imposed a felony and 15 a misdemeanor. Since then, the legal landscape has changed dramatically. Now, all states except New Mexico and West Virginia have laws imposing penalties for sexual acts with animals [31]. Twenty-three states impose a misdemeanor, 25 impose a felony, and many states now have improvements in criminality for certain sexual acts, such as coercing a minor into bestiality or for people with criminal records. Figure 1 shows a map of the United States showing jurisdictions defined by the severity of a sodomy conviction. Some new laws also require the convicted person to undergo a psychological assessment or face other penalties, .dem such as confiscation of pets or other animals. „Bestiality is now illegal in New Jersey — but there are still 10 other states where it isn`t. 12,000 years ago, humans depended primarily on animals as a source of food and raw materials in hunter-gatherer societies. It wasn`t until the end of the last ice age that humans began to domesticate animals.
Archaeological evidence in the Middle East suggests that wolves were the first animals to invade human societies. Cattle and pigs entered human societies about 9,000 years ago and were followed by horses, camels, donkeys, birds and others about 3,000 years ago [5]. It is perhaps not surprising that animals that first arrived in human societies were valued for the raw materials or agricultural benefits they offered. The first recorded legal texts show the economic value of animals at the beginning of human civilization. For example, the Hammurabi Codex of the Mesopotamian civilization of Babylonia is one of the earliest recorded legal texts. Its origin dates back to about 1750 BC [6]. The Code consists of 282 rules that penalize various types of behaviour, a significant part of which concerns the treatment of animals. Many rules determine the compensation due to the owner of a pet injured by someone or someone`s animals.[7] In particular, the legality of bestiality is not controlled at the federal level. The only relevant federal law is the sodomy law under the Military Code. This law provides that „any person subjected to this chapter and to carnal copulation unnatural with. An animal is guilty of sodomy. 10 U.S.C.A.
§ 925. The sentence is imposed by court martial. As you might expect, the law only applies to military personnel. Despite societal efforts to combat bestiality through legal mechanisms since the time of the Hittites, legislative efforts have not been guided by a scientific understanding of the behavior and risks posed by individuals who have sex with animals. Laws prohibiting bestiality have changed over the centuries in response to changing social and moral considerations, but research efforts have lagged far behind. The concept of linking animal cruelty to interpersonal violence has recently served as the main motivation for introducing and updating anti-cruelty laws, including those that criminalize sodomy. However, the research base for this aspect of the link is poor. At best, the literature suggests that people who engage in bestiality are likely to have other atypical sexual interests that may endanger people, including children. It may be helpful to think about how legislation can help us learn more about bestiality, for example through mandatory psychological assessments of offenders. Data derived from these assessments could clarify the behaviour and motivations of individuals who engage in sodomy, as well as their history of violence and other problematic sexual behaviours or violence.
This information could be used to promote a better understanding of bestiality and to elucidate appropriate mechanisms for dealing with offenders. Human societies established laws to regulate sexual acts between humans and nonhuman animals, or bestiality, beginning with the first recorded legal texts. While the legal response to bestiality has been largely punitive, the motivations for such regulation have changed over time. Researchers suggest that the first laws were enacted to address cultural concerns about community cleanliness [1]. Since then, motivations for laws governing human-animal interactions have included sodomy, religious or moral beliefs, animal rights concerns, and, more recently, the hypothetical link or relationship between animal cruelty and various forms of interpersonal violence [2]. Today, most jurisdictions in the United States prohibit sodomy, but laws vary greatly from state to state [3]. Another problem with the study of bestiality is the multitude of ethical challenges associated with this research. In addition to concerns about stigma, people with a history of bestiality may be reluctant to discuss bestiality and other problematic sexual behaviors because they are illegal. Participants may fear that their sexual behaviour may be reported to judicial authorities and prosecuted.
