Bestiality no different from homosexuality

THE story of Petros Ncube, an 18-year-old man from Tsholotsho who confessed in court, before he was sentenced to six months in prison with the other three suspended on condition that he performs 105 hours of community service, for having sex with donkeys six times a week has reopened the debate on the phenomenon of bestiality, an act that defies logic and goes far in eroding the divide that separates humans from animals.

The case of Petros Ncube is just a tip of the iceberg, the frequency of bestiality in Zimbabwe may be higher than what most people think.

Just like homosexuality, bestiality is a sexual deviancy that is unacceptable in Zimbabwe but is on the rise despite attempts by the police and society to put an end to it.

The media, possibly one of the faultless mirrors of society, has reported widely and wildly about it and banished all arguments by sceptics that it is a figment of the imagination.

Sceptics or no sceptics, sex with animals debases the dignity of humanity; blurs the lines that make a distinction between people and four-footed furred beasts.

It is the degrading nature of the practice that saw God condemning all who are strangely sexually attracted to animals. The Bible is crystal clear and does not leave anything to interpretation that bestiality is a sin.

Exodus 22 verse 19 says: "Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death," while Leviticus 18:23 declared that: "Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion".

Finding inspiration from the Bible and with all intention to preserve the sacredness of humans, right-thinking men and women came up with laws that outlawed bestiality. Even before the introduction of legal statutes, humanity had an unwritten law against the act and as a result its proponents have largely remained in the shadows.

Mr Thomas Sibanda, a lawyer said: "You don't need a law to necessarily know that bestiality is wrong, deep down in your heart you will know that what you are doing is not right. Your conscience is your first court chamber before the judicial system comes into play. Those who commit bestiality do not want to be caught because they know that it's a shame. In Zimbabwe you can be charged for bestiality under Section 74 of the Criminal Law, Codification and Reform Act Chapter 9:23."

Such public animosity which dates back to the days of yore stems from the fear and rightly so, that bestiality has the potential to knock off humans from their pedestal of being the privileged species into the wilderness of the animal kingdom.

One of the reasons bestiality is condemned through law and outside is that such degrading conduct subverts the standards of basic human dignity and is an affront to the human race's immeasurable importance.

The rationale of this article must not be frowned upon for it is the exalted moral status of humans that both grants special rights and imposes unique and solemn moral responsibilities that include the duty not to abuse animals.

Abuse some might ask? Without doubt bestiality is a form of animal cruelty because an animal cannot consent to sex with humans; it is a helpless partaker because of domestication.

Mr Sibanda believes that the people who engage in bestiality should be given a more deterrent jail sentence.

"I am not a practising lawyer but I know the law and I buy newspapers everyday and at times I stumble on stories of bestiality. The stories never cease to amaze me but what saddens me the most is that the perpetrators are given light sentences. I would love a situation whereby bestiality is classified in the same bracket as rape. The people who do such things are victimising animals and deserve to be punished," he said.

Mr Sibanda though not an expert in animals, also shredded the assumption by many that the animals do not feel pain and may actually enjoy the sex.

"This unfounded argument has been used by people with ill-intentions to downplay the sexual abuse of animals but it has no basis. In fact, it only makes them free and uninhibited to unleash themselves on helpless animals, which have no rights like humans and do not receive the full protection of the law, police and courts.

"People who rape animals know that the law is limited when it comes to bestiality. They take comfort in the fact that if caught they can get away with a light sentence. At the end of the day the practice continues. It is unfortunate that animals cannot express their feelings but I believe that a donkey prefers to mate a donkey and a chicken with a chicken, not with its owner or any other person," he argued.

But why is that a small minority of individuals with non-mainstream sexual interests pose a threat to the overall societal welfare?

Besides undermining the values of being human and promoting social anarchy, moral disintegration, and a view of humans that is inherently degrading, thereby harming the common good, bestiality can lead to the rise of diseases that have the potential to spread to the rest of humanity.

Such animal to human infections are known as zoonoses. Some of these infections may be transferred through casual contact, but the greater part is transmitted by sexual activities that expose humans to semen, vaginal fluids, urine, saliva, faeces and blood of animals. This means that sexual activity with animals is a high-risk activity.

One school of thought is that HIV/AIDS was originally a zoonosis acquired from primates that is apes and monkeys in Africa, probably from an animal bite. The argument was based on the fact that the virus only strives in primates and does not survive in other species or away from the human body and fluids.

Human sexually transmitted diseases are not carried or transmitted by animals.

However, many human pathogens can survive in animal fluids for a limited time, and therefore STDs may theoretically be transmitted by an animal that has multiple consecutive human sexual partners in a short time frame that allows pathogen survival.

Alongside AIDS, a disease called brucellosis, a potentially life-threatening multisystem ailment, exists and it is difficult to cure.

Symptoms of brucellosis are a fever that comes and goes, loss of appetite, fatigue, weakness, malaise, sore joints, low back pain, spine pain, headache, depression, abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhoea, vomiting, weakness, dizziness, unsteadiness of gait, and urinary retention.

Heart and lung complications can also occur. Allergic reactions to animal semen may occur, ranging from mild irritation to anaphylaxis.

Anaphylaxis is a severe allergic reaction that is swift from the onset and may cause death. It is an acute multi-system severe type one hypersensitivity reaction. Severe anaphylactic reactions can be fatal.

In some cases one can be injured by the animal that he is mating with or in worse case scenarios killed.

In 2005 the United States of America was shocked when a man, Kenneth Pinyan, an American Boeing engineer, died from having anal sex with a stallion. During a July 2005 sex act, videotaped by a friend, he suffered a perforated colon and later died of his injuries. The story was reported in The Seattle Times and was one of that paper's most read stories of 2005. It was informally referred to as the Enumclaw horse sex case.

Pinyan's death rapidly prompted the passing of a bill prohibiting both sex with animals and the videotaping of the same. Under current Washington law, bestiality is now a Class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Before the Pinyan saga, bestiality was legal for 117 years in America â€" that is not shocking for America is a country that thrives on immorality.

While in the Western world the high rates of bestiality can be attributed to the so-called rights to live one's life as one pleases, for commercial gain and to total madness, in Zimbabwe most people do it for ritual purposes largely due to the belief that it can cure AIDS.

A Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association (ZINATHA) member, Mr Aleck Moyo, threw this viewpoint out of the window and said it was being peddled by fake traditional healers.

"Bestiality is even worse than incest because it degrades the dignity of human beings. Animals are filthy creatures that do not think and cannot discern between right and wrong. God created them to be under our stewardship not to be equalled with us through sex.

"On the issue that it cures AIDS, I am surprised that people can be so stupid to believe the lies. I can tell you right now that there is no cure for AIDS and as far as I am concerned, bestiality is a sign of madness," said Mr Moyo.

Bestiality and homosexuality stem from human desire and not genes. No one is born into bestiality. Humans by nature have warped desires which should not be flaunted as a way of life. This act-is based on a sexual preference which strays outside the norm.

But trying to find the root cause of bestiality can take all day, for the rationale behind this ultimate sexual deviancy varies according to each individual and each individual's motive cannot be vindicated even if it is accompanied by the most articulate of arguments. For in a nutshell, bestiality just like homosexuality, is sexual deviancy gone too far.