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| Detail from the base of Lakshmana Temple in Khajuraho (India) |
By Chris Cottrell, The New York Times, February 1, 2013
BERLIN — Germany’s upper house of Parliament, the
Bundesrat, voted Friday to criminalize for the first time “using an animal for
personal sexual activities” and to punish offenders with fines of as much as
$34,000. It was the final legislative hurdle for a bill the lower house passed
in December.
The vote follows months of debate that pitted zoophiles against animal
rights and protection advocates. Sexual mores seemed not to play a paramount
role.
The ban, which carries only a misdemeanor charge, is an amendment to
the country’s animal protection law, multifaceted legislation that, among other
things, regulates animal testing and the sale of animals and prohibits animal
abuse, including “using an animal for personal sexual activities or making them
available to third parties for sexual activities and thereby forcing them to
behave in ways that are inappropriate to their species.”
Zoophiles argue that their relationships with their pets, or
“partners” as they prefer, are entirely mutual. Michael Kiok, a director of the
advocacy group Zoophilic Engagement for Tolerance and Enlightenment, who now
finds himself the de facto face of zoophilia in Germany, says animals are
perfectly capable of expressing whether or not they desire sex.
Animal-rights groups have criticized men like Mr. Kiok, saying they
put defenseless creatures in harm’s way.
But David Zimmermann, an animal caretaker who is also a director of
the zoophilic group, said: “It’s a sexual aspect that is entirely foreign to
most people. They just see a man and think, ‘What terrible things is he doing
to that dog?’ ”
Mr. Zimmermann had a Great Dane with which he occasionally had sex,
but it died four months ago, he said. Now he lives with his similarly zoophilic
boyfriend and their Dalmatian.
“For me she’s just a good friend that I care about very, very much —
there’s no sex,” Mr. Zimmermann said after a recent screening here of a
documentary-style film on zoophilia that depicted fictitious characters like a
pornography star with sexual feelings for cats and a butcher who fell in love
with a pig.
The film was shown in a stuffy cinema in downtown Berlin that
resembled a school classroom more than a movie theater, with rows of foldable
chairs and a projector screen. It delved into a more philosophical side of the
debate, with its view that it is hypocritical to denounce romantic
relationships with animals while largely ignoring the existence of
slaughterhouses or fur coats.
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