An Inclusive Litany

3/7/01

Last we heard from Princeton bioethics professor Peter Singer, he was advocating a highly controversial mix of euthanasia, infanticide, and animal rights. But it turns out in a recent book review in the on-line pornographic magazine nerve.com, he also has good things to say in favor of—what else—bestiality.

In a positive review of Midas Dekkers's Dearest Pet: On Bestiality, Singer writes that the human taboo on bestiality stems from strong genital similarities with animals, leading to "our desire to differentiate ourselves, erotically and in every other way, from animals." "Who has not," he writes, "been at a social occasion disrupted by the household dog gripping the legs of a visitor and vigorously rubbing its penis against them? The host usually discourages such activities, but in private not everyone objects to being used by her or his dog in this way, and occasionally mutually satisfying activities may develop."

[Ed.: Amazon customers who bought Dearest Pet also bought Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity and Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex.]