Netherlands Bans Sex with Animals

The ban was two years in the making, but the Dutch parliament has finally decided to outlaw bestiality and animal pornography.

REUTERS

A still of a man hugging a horse taken from the film "Zoo," a documentary about beastiality, which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film.

The Dutch parliament voted unanimously Thursday to ban sex with animals and pornography depicting bestiality. Anyone breaking the law now risks being sent to jail for up to six months. Until now, Dutch law had only forbidden bestiality in cases where animal suffering was involved.

By passing the ban, the Netherlands joins the ranks of 80 countries where animal pornography is explicity forbidden, Harm Evert Waalkens, the member of parliament who proposed the law, told the Associated Press. "The Netherlands has been a magnet for perversities -- and we want to stop that," Waalkens said, adding that pornographers had lobbied fiercely against a ban.

The Party for the Animals, however, which has two members of parliament, wanted the ban to be more wide-ranging. The party's Esther Ouwehand called for the castration of pigs and the artifical insemination of cows to also be outlawed, too.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,541437,00.html