This is going too far. Where's
@SigmatoZeta when you need him?
Like I have said often, the laws are not very relevant if they are not enforced. The anti-marijuana laws, for example, had virtually no effect at all on consumption, and the way that police behaved, in respect to marijuana, shifted in respect to social attitudes. These kinds of misguided laws only make it all the more imperative that we try to improve our rapport with society.
We also ought to monitor the language that is being used for promoting these kinds of bills. Under the purposive approach to jurisprudence, this is relevant. HSUS has been making heavy use of the word "violent" while pushing for these bills. Under the purposive approach, it is arguable that a prosecutor would therefore be obligated to prove that any specific act was clearly a violent act for it that act to qualify. Unless you are actually doing something clearly violent to your animal, then any defense attorney that didn't personally hate you would be able to get you out of any such charges in the unlikely event that any were made.
While the purposive approach is not preferred by all judges, judges use many different approaches when making decisions in a courtroom. A defense attorney that was worth what they were being paid would be able to make a case that this is exactly the sort of instance that the purposive approach was intended for. Because of the language that was being used for promoting the bill, the legislators clearly believed that they were stopping an act of unequivocal violence, not any peaceful act. Even a judge that would usually be averse to using the purposive approach would understand that the very nature of zoophilia, as normally practiced, had been deliberately and calculatedly misrepresented to the legislature.
In the unlikely event that you were ever charged with this crime based on a clearly peaceful act, then the only likely way that you would ever be convicted would be if your defense attorney was drunk, the judge hated you, and the jury was not paying attention.
Otherwise, you should not be afraid of this law. The rule of law, if exercised with valid intentions, will usually protect you more than it hurts you if you are generally a peaceful individual. You should use elements of the law that protect you if at all possible, and you should not go through life believing that it is normal for the rule of law to be used against peaceful individuals. The law protects most people that have peaceful intentions, even if some laws on the books are misguided.
A sour relationship with your community is always a lot more dangerous to you than a law. If people in your area have fearful and prejudicial beliefs toward zoophiles, then you are at risk of street violence, discrimination at work, abandonment by family members, and other kinds of problems that are associated with widespread fear and distrust toward a group of people. In the long-run, these kinds of problems will damage you a lot more than the law itself. This is not a new problem, but most of our actual problems, in life, have always arisen from poor relations with society.
Do not fear the rule of law. Continue to look to the rule of law as a source of protection, especially against unlawful vigilante violence. The law is on the side of people that overall have lawful intentions in how they would choose to live, and it always has been.
Furthermore, if anybody commits a crime against you because they believe that this law justifies them in committing a crime against you, then you should attempt to get that crime against you prosecuted as a hate crime. Do not let those statutes just sit there. If they exist, then you should use them to defend yourself against actual criminals.
You are not a criminal, not even based on this law. The language that was used to promote it was directed at violent criminals, not at peaceful individuals. It is extremely unlikely that any zoophile that chooses to live peacefully will ever be convicted based on it.
Anti-zoophile hate groups believe that the rule of law will be used to destroy peaceful people, but they believe this because they are ignorant about how the rule of law was originally designed. The very lies that they use to manipulate well-meaning legislators can be turned back against their hateful agenda, and when they find this out, they will realize that it is they--those that inflame hate and fear and violence against their fellow citizen--that are ultimately treated as criminals. When they discover that the law is seldom ever used to hurt peaceful people, they WILL turn to vigilante violence, and when this occurs, we must be prepared to turn toward the rule of law instead as a source of protection.
As I have grown older, I have had one experience after another that supports the standpoint that the rule of law is the most potent weapon of peaceful people against tyranny and ochlocracy. People that have the intention of living peacefully and overall with respect toward their fellow citizens should never believe that the law is more useful as a device of tyranny than it is as a device of protecting them from tyranny. The belief that we, the people, live under the rule of law, not the whims of either the mob or a political leader invested with ill-gotten power, is an anti-authoritarian belief, not really an authoritarian belief. The rule of law is always more potent as a weapon for protecting those that choose to live peacefully, and it will never be particularly useful as a weapon for disrupting the innocent. As long as the rule of law prevails, it will protect us in the end.
ladyfreethinker.org
