On Thursday, Mr. Michael Patrick McPhail earned the honor of becoming the very first person ever to be charged with bestiality in Washington State.
I have written about bestiality once before in this venue. At that time, the state of Washington was considering passing a law against doing the nasty with varmints.
Washington, back then, was one of the few states that did not specifically ban human-livestock intercourse. The lack of such a statute was more of an oversight, or loophole, than a deliberate omission. It’s one of those things that everyone sort of assumed must be banned somewhere. But all of a sudden in 2005 they realized that it wasn’t, when the police, investigating a bizarre death by horse copulation, busted up a clandestine bestiality ring — only to admit that they couldn’t charge the horse-buggerers with any crime.
To the surprise of many, the proposed law was hotly debated. The Evergreen State had become something of a secret Bestiality Mecca, and the “animal-loving” advocates were not about to surrender their lifestyle without a fight. The vehement pro-bestial advocates used arguments which will sound familiar to libertarians: You can’t legislate morality. It’s consensual. A victimless crime. But the law passed anyway, to the relief of Mr. McPhail’s pit bull terrier, among others.
Washington’s new law against bestiality is part of a general anti-cruelty statute; it defines any sexual exploitation of an animal as cruelty to the animal. The pro-bestial libertarians argue — quite rightly — that this is absurd and wrong, since some animals quite demonstrably enjoy sex with humans, and even initiate the encounters themselves. They also point out the obvious irony that killing, skinning, and eating these same beasts is perfectly legal, as long as steps are taken to minimize suffering. So how can sexual contact be “cruelty” when the animals are enjoying it?
These pro-bestial arguments are disarming to any honest and consistent libertarian. Even Instapundit Glenn Reynolds allows that he’s “got nothing against” bestiality, explaining “since I’m happy to eat animals it’s hard for me to consider people having sex with them to be, you know, more exploitative.”
That’s because libertarianism is fundamentally wrong.
The worthiest argument against bestiality is not that it is “cruel,” nor that it is “exploitative.” It is that it is a violation of human dignity.
Bestiality is so very wrong not only because using animals sexually is abusive, but because such behavior is profoundly degrading and utterly subversive to the crucial understanding that human beings are unique, special, and of the highest moral worth in the known universe–a concept known as “human exceptionalism.”
Within the narrow blinders of libertarianism, laws can only be justified by appeal to an unconsenting victim. Human dignity has no place in the libertarian worldview, and the libertarian is left with no basis to outlaw what he calls “victimless crimes.” Prostitution, polygamy, pornography, incest, drug abuse, bestiality, and a host of other crimes, being consensual, must be legal, and that’s that.
And this is libertarianism’s greatest failing. The libertarians happen to come to the right conclusions on a great many issues of policy, and I am happy to ally with them on those issues. But libertarianism is not an adequate theory of governance.
I say, if you can’t think of any reason to “legislate morality,” then you should step aside and let someone with some common sense do the legislating. Michael McPhail’s dog says so, too.
UPDATE: Thanks for linking, Glenn. (I fixed a misspelling of your name in the title.)
FOLLOW-UP! After reading the comments to this post, you’ll definitely want to read “Sean answers the libertarians”!