Why Is Beastiality Wrong?

“Do no harm” isn’t enough. The sacred distinguishes Christian from secular morality.

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Years ago I met an animal rights activist who made some interesting points. I said that human life is more important than animal life, but she disagreed. She said that we are not made in God’s image because there is no God, so there’s nothing special about human beings except maybe our “speciesism.” 

There’s no rational basis, she continued, for believing that human life is more valuable than animal life. Riffing off Princeton University ethics professor Peter Singer, she argued that ethics is about the capacity for conscious suffering. Princeton University started in 1746 as a Christian college (the College of New Jersey), but we wouldn’t describe it that way today.

A secular approach to ethics leads to some disturbing conclusions, however, which to Singer’s credit he does not sugarcoat. Singer admits that, “It isn’t unreasonable to hold that an individual human life begins at conception.” But that doesn’t matter. He not only supports abortion—he also states that, “Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all.” This is non-voluntary euthanasia because the “defective” infant is unable to make his or her wishes known. But Singer draws the line at involuntary euthanasia because in that case the person could consent or not consent. 

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Intelligent animals, however, can experience suffering, as when a cow is slaughtered. Eating meat, therefore, is unethical, and veganism (consuming no animal products at all) is ideal. But while Singer acknowledges that “zoophilia” isn’t natural, he doesn’t necessarily think beastiality is wrong if the animal is not harmed. 

How far can we take ethics divorced from the sacred? Though the effort to destigmatize pedophiles as “minor attracted persons” (MAP) might seem like a fringe internet thing, we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss it. The Catholic Church has its horrific history of covering up child rape by priests, but this is a gross departure from Catholic belief. Due to his concerns about suffering, I would hope that Singer would draw a line here too. But what about cognitively impaired children who won’t suffer because they don’t know what’s happening to them? Aren’t these children, per Singer’s ethics, no different from animals? 

On the plus side, however, Singer is a strong advocate for the poor and says we should all give a lot more money to charity. Still, the sacredness of human life divides Christian and secular morality. Whether you believe human beings are made in the image of God makes a world of difference. Many non-religious people might cringe at some of Singer’s beliefs, but if so they must provide a non-theistic basis for the sacredness of human life (or of sacredness at all). 

This might sound merely academic, but it matters because these ideas often become mainstream. In 1990, most of us would have scoffed had someone held up a copy of Judith Butler’s newly printed book Gender Trouble and said, “You know, within thirty years this revolutionary claim will be mainstream—that not just gender, but sex also is really just a cultural belief and not an objective biological fact.” Yet, here we are. 

This stands in contrast to Christian teachings about the body. People often ask, bemused, why Christians are so obsessed with sex. It must reveal unconscious and unresolved sexual desires. If only we would relax and indulge a bit more we’d be happier. 

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The modern ethos is freedom without responsibility, in contrast to the traditional ethos of responsibility as the path to freedom. But desire is insatiable and can control us. Cultivating self-discipline is the only way for us to prevent desire from becoming our master.

Non-Christians also wonder why, instead of rising from the dead, Jesus couldn’t just live on in our hearts. Even some progressive Christians don’t understand why it’s not Christianity without Christ’s physical resurrection. And too many Catholics don’t understand the physicality of the Eucharist—why physical unity with Christ’s body is so important. 

Catholic Christianity is an earthy religion—transcendence doesn’t mean leaving the physical world behind. We are made in the Image of God but are formed from the dust of the earth. Yet, we are in a battle against God. He decided to call our bluff by becoming man and letting us kill Him. The Resurrection, then, conquered death; and our eternal life will not be merely spiritual but physical as well.

What we do with our bodies, then, has great gravity. St. Paul writes in Ephesians that God “has put all things under [Christ’s] feet and has made Him the head over all things for the church, which is His body” (1:22-23). This is why “the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Corinthians 6:13). St. Paul then asks rhetorically, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? God forbid!” (verse 15). And then the warning: “Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God” (1 Thessalonians 4:8).