In the philosophy of harm reduction I thought I would visit this thread which popped up on my google alert on the topic of zoophilia.
A little about myself. I'm in my 40s, a professional instructor of adults, married for two decades, contributor to and volunteer for the local community, had a perfectly normal childhood with no skeletons in the closet, etc. I've also been attracted to horses since a little before puberty.
I am posting this partly to set some of the record straight, partly because the social stigma of alternate sexuality needs to be eliminated, and partly because I know that being "alone" with this can be a very hard thing.
Consent:
I firmly believe adult animals can consent and even enthusiastically enjoy sex. I can anecdotally give you a lot of examples but I give you your own experiences. Lets look at dogs, almost all dogs hate having their nails clipped in my experience, and it is quite obvious that they do. The may tolerate it but it is abundantly obvious they are not willing participants. How about a game of fetch, it is also pretty obvious that they want to play. My dogs do something I find exceptionally cute where they will literally nose my hand up onto their head to receive a good petting. Yes, dogs cannot verbalize, but they do have ways of making their preferences known. One last thought before I get on to the problem I have with people suddenly being concerned about animal consent, I have never, ever, been afraid of a six year old child but I have been afraid of an adult dog. Dogs and other animals can and will say no vigorously as much as they will say yes to things that are pleasurable.
So my issue with the consent argument is this, if sex with animals(SWA) is truly rape because we cannot get consent, then what the hell is that juicy steak on your plate? Murder? You see my biggest problem with this argument isn't that people believe it, protecting animals is a good thing, but that they literally turn around and are happy to ignore consent when it comes to their own pleasure in gobbling down meat. Is petting a strange dog now assault? No one cares until it is about sex which to me suggests that it is far more about the sex than the ethics around it.
In the end, what is the ethics of the relationship between man and beast?
http://www.thelocal.dk/20141013/bestiality-ban-not-needed-ethics-council-says
Analyzing Bestiality by Sarah Wheeler
Another thought for you, if you eat cheese, drink milk, eat pork and so forth almost ALL these animals in an industrial setting are artificially inseminated. For cows and pigs this is a particularly painful process and to me would fit ANY definition of rape you would care to throw at me as it is plainly obvious it is not consensual and involves the sex organs. If you were never upset with that, then why are you upset with this, be honest?
Animal pleasure and intelligence:
The literature speaks for itself here that when given the opportunity animals can seek pleasure and can and do make their choices known.
http://www.thehorse.com/articles/34718/study-horses-can-communicate-blanketing-preferences
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_vices#cite_note-equinestudfarmmed-6
Teamwork, pleasure and bargaining in animal social behaviour J. ROUGHGARDEN Journal of Evolutionary Biology.
Secton 2.4.3 of
Animal pleasure and its moral significance in the journal of Applied Animal and Behaviour Science Vol 118(2009) is of particular significance to the understand of why we think animals feel "no pleasure" during sex and the entire aritcle throws into stark contrast the idea of animals as unsuffering unthinking unintelligent individuals.
Unfortunately this topic is so wildly open ended and subject to so many assumptions that I can only go on what I've personally experiece in that animals will sex pleasure when other needs are met and sexual pleasure is a primary motivator when animals are allowed to express it.
I'd like you to think about why we neuter our pets in North America. The number one reason I hear is "it fixes behaviour problems" but what behaviour problems does it fix exactly? Sexual behaviours. In this way it is interesting to note that the attitude towards neutering is very different in Europe.
The "Link" between animal abuse and violence(and the assumption that sex is automatically abuse):
I can't help but notice that most of the links to the "research" are invalid, however from the context I was able to guess which studies they were since I've read everything I've been able to get my hands on. Characteristics of Juvenile Offenders Admitting to Sexual Activity with Nonhuman Animals by Fleming et al. is where a lot of these claims come from and is an absolutely atrocious piece of research. First, it only talked to "criminals" to begin with, while on the order of 94% of the sex offenders didn't have sex with animals it tried hard to make a link between sex with animals and such offences, and if you read the discussion it even states how flawed the research is before going on to generalize. Of course that's not what gets reported by humane societies. Also, if you read the biblography all his references are from an abuse perspective, they are pretty cherry picked to be honest.
Here is what real research reads like, while it is a specific case study it is an exceptionally informative read:
In a previous article, we presented phallometric data to illustrate a case of preferential bestiality or zoophilia (Earls & Lalumière, Sex Abuse: J Res Treat, 14:83-88, 2002). Based on the available literature, we argued that a marked preference for having sex with animals over sex with humans is extremely rare. In the present article, we describe a second case of zoophilia that challenges the widely held assumptions that men who have sex with animals are generally of below average intelligence and come from rural areas. In addition, we provide a brief review of a burgeoning quantitative literature using large groups of zoophiles recruited from internet sources. Although estimates of the prevalence of zoophilia are not possible at this time, it appears that zoophilia is not as rare as once thought and shares many features with other atypical sexual interests.(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18157625)
Others to examine are researchers who talk to people who are not sex offenders already, they have much more valid comments on the topic and are much less inflammatory in their rhetoric. Remember when all gays were pedophiles, that gays were more likely to be sex offenders, that gays were going to destroy the moral fabric of the universe? This is the same ocean, just a different boat. Those things are much more likely the result of how people are treated than the sexual attraction itself.
History:
Porky Pig: In early America, farm animals took the blame for zoophilic sex. by Jesse Bering
Dearest Pet: On Bestiality by Midas Deckkers is an excellent documentation of bestiality in art and throughout history.
A Historical Overview of Sex with Animals by R. E. L. Masters
Conclusion:
Back to the harm reduction, to stigmatize people for a sexual orientation(as more modern research is starting to class it btw. See Beetz, Miletski) is to force people, old ones like me but more importantly young ones, to hide parts of themselves. I wouldn't normally consider that a particular problem as I am a private person but the message they then receive as to who and what they are, some of which you can see on this thread, are extremely damaging. Even when I sit in a group of my fellow travelers do you know how hard it is to talk openly on this subject. For some it ever remains impossible. What if you're 12 years old, feel like I do, and learn that you are hated and despised. You think that suicide amongst the gay community is high, well, the suffering in the zoo community is there like no tomorrow. Ever since Kinsey we've known that animal lovers have been almost as populous (estimates ranging from 10-30 million in the US alone) as any other sexual minority group
Most of what I've said is not authoritative or in depth. I've tried to link sources that remain relatively neutral on the subject and not stuff written by zoophiles. You don't have to accept what I am, and I really don't care if you do, but when you start raining down hate on me for what I am I will stand up and object. I so wish I didn't have to hide my name, I'm relatively proud of who I am but I am desperately aware of the consequences of a witch hunt. I support and assist several local animal charities as I am able to. I support much tougher animal protection laws so long as they don't explicitly define sex as abuse. Many times an argument is made "he was let off because no one could find any harm so we need a new law" but the statement in itself should show the falsity of the thought, there was no harm.
Everyone who sees me with my animals, whether they know or not, has complimented me on my relationship with them. Horse people are constantly amazed at the interactions my mare and I have and how "impossible" it seems to them to have such a good relationship(I could list off a tonne of common horse problems that go away when you consider the animals feelings). People with decades of experience with horses I might add. I do no harm and I NEVER would, not even a little. My mare seeks out encounters sometimes, most times, even over food and equine companionship.
I hope that helps you understand some more of what zoophilia is.
This is just a total WTF kind of thing that's also gross/fucked up whereas child victimizers are truly evil, bad people. I don't necessarily think he's a bad person per say for this, just a very strange and obviously psychologically unwell one. I think he should go to a therapist for sure, because it wouldn't be good if he acted on these messed up urges 
