A 45-year-old Hampton man, Timothy Raymond Moran, has pleaded guilty in circuit court to committing bestiality with his dog in 2021, reports The Virginian-Pilot. A nephew reported finding video footage that showed Moran receiving oral sex from his dog, JB, at his aunt’s home. Penalties could include five years in prison and a fine of $2,500.
Moran’s ex-wife, Jessica Phillips, told the Pilot that the bestiality charge disgusted her. “I felt sick. It’s quite disturbing,” she said. “To me it goes along with pedophilia and other deviant sexual crimes. It’s not a normal action people do.”
My question to readers: is Phillips being too judgmental? If the act was consensual — if the dog was not being coerced into doing whatever he (or she… or they, not sure how the dog identifies) did — what’s the big deal? Do dogs suffer trauma from… from whatever it was that the dog was doing? Consider that dogs have very different attitudes towards sniffing and licking body parts than humans do. What is “normal” anyway? Whose normality are we talking about? Is the bestiality law a relic of Virginia’s racist, patriarchal, heteronormative specie-ist past?
Or can we state unequivocally that Phillips is absolutely right; that sexual taboos still properly exist in our society, and that bestiality is one of them? Social mores are evolving so fast that I can’t keep up. Can we agree on anything?
Bonus question: did Phillips violate JB’s privacy rights by filming the encounter?
Update: I have received several responses from readers who were shocked by this post. Was I serious about defending Moran’s behavior? The answer is NO, I was not serious! I was being totally tongue in cheek when I asked if Phillips was being judgmental about her calling her husband a sexual deviant. My purpose was to troll progressives who have continually defined deviancy down and find out if there are any limiting principles to what they find acceptable. My sense from the comments is that, no, they don’t approve of bestiality but they cannot articulate any limiting principles…. Some behaviors absolutely should be taboo, but we appear to be on a slippery slope.
C’mon people, privacy rights for dogs? Surely you knew I was being facetious! Still, if I failed to make my intention crystal clear, the fault is mine.
— JAB
