Beastiality

Bestiality

Sexual relations between men or women and animals are clearly forbidden by the Torah. Such acts are condemned in the strongest possible terms, as confusion.

Commandment 155
Vayikra 18:23
²³Do not lie with an animal to be contaminated with it; a woman shall not stand before and animal for mating, it is a perversion.

Commandment 156
Vayikra 18:23
²³Do not lie with an animal to be contaminated with it; a woman shall not stand before and animal for mating, it is a perversion.

The word translated as "perversion" in the NKJV and others is the Hebrew word tebel meaning unnatural bestiality or confusion. This is different from the word salaph which means properly to wrench, that is, (figuratively) to subvert:—overthrow, pervert. The word tebel speaks directly to the subject.

The confusion that is spoken of in this passage refers back to what God stated after the act of creation.

B’reshit 1:24-28
²⁴God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures, each according to its kind: animal and creeping ting, and beast of the land each according to its kind.” And it was so. ²⁵God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, and the animal according its kind, and every creeping being of the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
²⁶And God said, “Let us make Man in Our image, after Our likeness.” ²⁷So God create Man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. ²⁸God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea, the bird of the sky, and every living thing that moves on the earth”

It is very clear that animals are supposed to procreate with animals and humans with humans. Adam, however, was without a suitable helper. So...

B’reshit 2:21-24
²¹So HASHEM God cast a deep sleep upon the man and he slept; and He took one of his sides and he filled in flesh in its place. ²²Then HASHEM God fashioned the side that He had taken from the man into a woman, and He brought her to the man. ²³And the man said, “This time it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This shall be called Woman, for from man was she taken.” ²⁴Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

Fortunately, HASHEM in His infinite wisdom, has engineered each species so that a beast cannot impregnate a human being or vice-versa. However this reality is changing as of the date of this page. HASHEM help us.

Research for This Article

While doing research for this article I made some very interesting discoveries:

There are practically no commentaries from Sofrim on this subject — probably because it is the most perverse of human behavior imaginable;

A search for "animal sex" was made on the Internet and yielded the following:
     for 1998 - about 2,000,000 hits;
     for 2005 - about 8,600,000 hits - up 330% in seven years; and
     for 2008 - about 20,100,000 hits - up 900% in 10 years.

A search for "bestiality" or "bestiality" was on the Internet and yielded the following:
     for 1999 about 136,000 hits;
     for 2005 about 1,750,000 hits - up 1,187% in six years; and
     for 2008 about 17,500,000 hits - up 12,767% in nine years.

There appears to be more women having intercourse with male animals than men with female animals. The incidence of men and women engaging in oral sex with male animals appears to be about the same.

Most studies consider the incidence of sex with animals to be very low and prevalent only in rural areas of the country. There are exceptions. The urban culture seems to center around so-called "kennel clubs". The rules of such "kennel clubs" are simple. Women have relations with men, women and male dogs. At one reported such "club", new inductees are required to submit to sexual advances from any person or animal. The woman is required to attend all "club" meetings and to be completely nude and open to the advances of anyone or any animal until a new female joins the "club".

The Legal History of Bestiality

You may ask "Where is the Church in all of this?" The church is visibly absent in any discoverable discussions about bestiality. The church, which until the time of Henry VIII still had jurisdiction over all sexual crimes, issued "Penitential Books" which described in the minutest detail all forbidden sexual acts and the punishment which was attached to them. Some of these books survive in the British Library. They are written in Latin and, according to Rattery Taylor, author of "Sex in History," are so explicit that they would immediately fall foul of the English obscenity laws if published. The five penitential codes contain some 22 paragraphs defining every conceivable form of Sodomy.

Before we go on to looking at some specific cases, we should look at why the church was so keen to seek out practitioners of unnatural acts, the infamous "crime against nature."

The church, even at this time, was still directly involved in what it saw as the fight against superstition and Paganism. Much use was still made of spells and curses, potions containing the penises and testicles of bulls and horses were widely believed to have magical, rather than medical, powers to improve a man's potency, or to win over a shy virgin.

Many of these beliefs were handed down from pre-Christian religions in which the sexual union of human and beast were part of their animistic rites. There were certainly very active horse cults both in Ireland and the Nordic Lands which persisted well into the fifth century.

Within living memory, a hangover from these times was still practiced in Iceland. The stallion fight, although no one would suggest it has retained it's original meaning, was still to be seen at the turn of the century. It consisted of two stallions fighting over an in-season mare in the middle of a large arena. The winner then favored the mare with as many coverings as he could manage before the next pair came in to the arena for the entertainment of the crowd.

It is easy to see that this display of masculine strength and sexual potency was originally a way of selecting the best beast to be offered in sacrifice to the gods. The interested reader may wish to know that such stallion fights are still practiced publicly in the Philippines.

CASE STUDIES

We will now go on to a few of the reported cases. We must remember here that Europe was completely dependent on agriculture and opportunities were available to all and taken by many more than were ever caught. In winter, the animals lived in the lower part of the house and the people in the upper part in order that the animals could provide a rudimentary form of heating and be safe from hungry wolves. It is easy to imagine a lonely farmer choosing to warm himself by seeking "body warmth" from his horse.

In many non-European cultures, sexual acts between humans and animals were never taboo. They were, for instance, not punished or even considered socially unacceptable among Hopi Indians and Kupfer Eskimos in America or among the Kusaia and Masai Tribes in Africa. Indeed, it has been reported that Masai adolescents frequently used donkeys as a sexual outlet. In Peru, Dr. Francisco Guerra found that no less than six percent of the jugs used by the native Indians contained bestiality motifs, as opposed to the three percent which depicted homosexuality. The rest were concerned with heterosexual sex acts, oral, anal, etc..

It is interesting to explore the history of bestiality up to present day. The Law (which supposedly went away) regarding intercourse with animals, was in many instances enforced up to and including the commanded execution of both the human and the animal violators. For instance:

In 1468, one Monsieur Jean Beisse was convicted of copulating with a cow and a goat. Jean, the cow and the goat were all burned at the stake.

In 1601, 16 year old Caudine de Culam was convicted of intercourse with a dog. Both were hanged and their bodies burned.

November 1607, a young boy convicted and hanged for copulating with a mare. The mare was killed at the foot of the gallows with a pole axe.

In 1649, M. Vijon burned for having sex with a bird. (I really haven't figured out how this is possible)

In Pilgrim Father's Plymouth Colony a divorce law enacted in 1639 mentions bestiality specifically as a ground for divorce.

Cotton Mather in his book "The history of New England," written at the end of the seventeenth century, describes how a Weymouth man, who had been a lifelong Sodomite, was first made to watch as 3 sheep, 2 sows, 2 heifers and a cow, all of which had been his sexual partners, were hanged. It seems that in this puritanical world that the animals involved were just as guilty "before God" as the man himself. He was executed in the same manner shortly afterwards.

Another case from New England in the mid-seventeenth century concerns one Thomas Granger, an imbecile from Duxbury. He had copulated with a mare, a cow, 2 goats, five sheep, 2 calves and a turkey. He ended up on the gallows of course.

For a first class demonstration of how effective torture can be we turn to a man who admitted, under torture, to sodomising a sow, knowing full well that he would hang for it. The evidence was that a piglet had a human appearance, and "a flecked eye exactly like his...because of this he was suspected and admitted his guilt." It is, of course, an absolute impossibility for a man to father a pig. We must then assume that the poor man decided that hanging was better than to allow the torture to continue.

In 1683, Denmark passed a law making both homosexuality and bestiality punishable by burning. In 1711, it was decided that those convicted should be garroted as well as burned.

In England in 1821, the law read:
"Any person, who commits the crime of sodomy, either with a man, or with any animal, and is found guilty, will be put to death."

The sentence was always death of course, but as the presence of semen in the animal had to be proven to get a conviction until this date, many of those charged had to be released. In order to raise the conviction/hanging rate, the evidence required was changed so that it was no longer necessary "to prove ejaculation, rather intercourse shall be deemed to have occurred if penetration has occurred." If no penetration had occurred but a witness observed someone "attempting" to copulate with an animal, the sentence was 10 years. The law was revised in 1861 and the sentence reduced to life imprisonment. This law remains to this day!

What does HASHEM have to say about the "harshness" of these punishments?

Vayikra 20:15-16
¹⁵A man who shall lie with an animal shall be put to death; and you shall kill the animal. ¹⁶And a woman who approaches any animal for it to mate with her, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.

Over the past century, punishment for the crime of bestiality has been reduced to time in prison or eliminated altogether.

In a suggested change to the law in Switzerland, in 1909, the "crime" of bestiality was deliberately left out.

In 1944, an American soldier was convicted by general court-marshal of sodomy with a cow and sentenced to a dishonorable discharge and 3 years hard labor. The cow was spared, but in England into the 1950's, animals were still sometimes ordered to be destroyed in such cases.

In 1962, Illinois became the first American state to revise it's criminal code along the lines suggested in The Model Penal Code (devised by American Law Institute). Specifically, oral genital contacts, and anal intercourse between consenting adults in private and sexual acts with animals are no longer criminal offenses. Connecticut, New York and Kansas have also made some revisions in this area.

California Penal Code paragraph 286:
Sodomy-Punishment : Every person who is guilty of the infamous crime against nature, committed with mankind or with any animal, is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison of not less than one year.

In the Former Eastern (Communist) half of Germany, Bestiality was not an offense. Bestiality ceased to be a crime in West Germany when the law was removed from the Strafgesetzbuch in 1969 due to lack of use.

Sodomistic intercourse with animals has also been removed from the list of criminal sexual offenses in France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Holland and Russia. Such cases are now dealt with under indecency and animal cruelty regulations and are most unlikely to receive a prison sentence. In those countries such as Great Britain, which have not updated their laws, the penalty is, normally, still life imprisonment, i.e.; the modern equivalent of a death sentence.

CONCLUSION: The waning influence of the ecclesia and the departure from adherence to the commandments of God are apparent in the so-called decriminalization I don't believe it unusual that as the church's influence has waned that sex acts with animals has increased at an inversely proportional rate.

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