My comments really have no sexual connotations at all. I will get to those later. But a lot of these arguments are tied to the concept that animals have "rights." Now, I don't want PETA on my front doorstep, but personally, I find the concept of embuing animals with rights as a little nonsensical. I just can't get around the perception of an animal having a right to anything. From a biblical standpoint, man was created and placed here and given dominion over all things. From a legalistic standpoint, on a sentient being can have rights. To my knowledge, animals are not sentient. They may be intelligent, they may be able to display certain sentient traits, but they are not sentient beings. From these standpoints, if an animal has no rights, there are no rights to be violated and consequently the argument is moot.

Now, we, as sentient beings, do have a responsibility to treat every living thing with care from a stewarship standpoint. We kill animals in the normal course of our own existence. We have a responsibility to see that this is done in as painless and quick manner as possible to spare the creature suffering. Does involving an animal in a sexual encounter with a human cause suffering. Probably not unless it involves some sort of sadistic abusive acts, in which case it would be irresponsible, since, unlike a lot of masochistic subbies I know, the animal gets no observable pleasure from the act.

I think the bigger argument is, are we acting responsibily when we engage in or encourage these acts?