What (if Anything) Is Wrong with Bestiality?

Peter Singer is used to controversy—indeed, he seems to court it—but nothing could have prepared him for the reaction which followed his recent review of Midas Dekker’s Dearest Pet for the on-line version of Nerve magazine. Dekker’s book is a social, historical, and psychological examination of bestiality, and Singer’s review has been widely perceived as condoning the practice. The horrified reaction from the mass media was almost immediate. Singer was denounced in the editorial pages of newspapers across the United States and beyond. Condemnation came from the right and the left alike: “Animal Crackers,” the opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal was entitled, while the Village Voice declared that it was Singer himself who was the animal. Singer claims that he was not in fact defending bestiality, merely examining the reasons for the taboo against it. But this is a little disingenuous. Clearly Singer believes that the taboo is irrational, the product of our superstitious belief that “a wide, unbridgeable gulf” separates us humans from other animals. In fact, Singer points out, we are very much like them, and nowhere more so in than in our sexuality: “We copulate as they do.” Since with this realization the usual supports of the taboo fall away, we must look elsewhere for reasons supporting the banning of bestiality—or give up the prohibition altogether. From Singer’s utilitarian viewpoint, to establish that bestiality is wrong we would have to be able to show that it would have harmful consequences, for the participants or for others. But it is difficult to believe that such harms will characterize all acts of bestiality. Hence, Singer clearly implies, there is nothing wrong with bestiality. Of course, Singer’s critics are far from conceding the point. Interestingly, many of them do not seem to think that the taboo against bestiality needs any defense at all (for The Wall Street Journal, for instance, the mere fact that Singer was defending the practice ought to “come as a tremendous embarrassment to professional ethicists”). But some of Singer’s critics do put forward arguments. In what follows, I will examine the arguments against bestiality, from newspapers and philosophers alike. As we shall see, none of them are very convincing. Nevertheless, I am not willing to conclude, with Singer, that the taboo against bestiality is simply the last residue of a fundamentally superstitious worldview. I therefore devote the last part of the paper to a reconsideration of the taboo. As we shall see, though Singer is right in thinking that bestiality is not immoral, it does not follow from this fact that giving up the taboo is rational.