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9 Feb, 2016 03:12

Bestiality sans beast: Ban on oral & anal sex passes Michigan Senate inside animal abuse bill

Bestiality sans beast: Ban on oral & anal sex passes Michigan Senate inside animal abuse bill

There’s good news and bad news with the passage of a new bill in the Michigan Senate. While individuals convicted of animal abuse would not be allowed to legally own a pet for five years, oral and anal sex amongst people would be banned as well.

Senate Bill 219, also known as Logan’s Law, which is named for a Husky that was burned with acid by an abusive owner, passed by a 37-1 vote and is headed to the House Judiciary Committee. While animal rights activists may bask in the victory, residents of in Wolverine State who enjoy anal or oral sex might be a little bit frustrated with the 20th page of the 21-page bill.

A person who commits the abominable and detestable crime against nature either with mankind or with any animal is guilty of a felony,” the bill reads. The language of this bill, which has six other bipartisan sponsors, is not only problematic for making “sodomy” (defined as either anal or oral sex) punishable by prison, but also because it equates both acts with bestiality, despite the fact that they (usually) take place between consenting humans.

How an animal abuse bill ended up involving a paragraph making sodomy punishable by 15 years in prison has yet to be explained, but the bill’s sponsor, Republican Rick Jones, made an attempt to justify his reason for not removing it from the bill, saying that it was purely pragmatic.

Nobody wants to touch it. I would rather not even bring up the topic, because I know what would happen,” Jones originally told The New Civil Rights Movement. “You’d get both sides screaming and you end up with a big fight that’s not needed because it’s unconstitutional,” referring to a 2003 Supreme Court ruling that struck down bans on homosexual sex as a violation of privacy. Yet Michigan remains one of twelve states that still have sodomy bans on the books, despite the ruling from the nation’s high court.

As the Advocate points out, Jones’ logic for not removing the wording from bill is essentially that the Supreme Court ruling renders the state law moot. However, that has not prevented individuals from getting arrested for it. According to the Advocate, in 2015 two men were arrested in Louisiana for “unnatural carnal copulation,” as Louisiana’s state law puts it.

Baton Rouge Police were issued a reminder to stop arresting people under the statue, the Advocate reports. However, similar laws still exist on the books in Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.

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