– Senate Repeals Bans on Sodomy and Bestiality in the Military (The Blaze, December 2, 2011):
The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to approve a defense authorization bill which included a provision that not only repealed the military ban on sodomy, but also repealed the ban on having sex with animals — or bestiality.
CNS News reported:
On Nov. 15, the Senate Armed Services Committee had unanimously approved S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a provision to repeal Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
Article 125 of the UCMJ makes it illegal to engage in both sodomy with humans and sex with animals.
It states: “(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense. (b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”
The vote to remove sodomy from military law comes less than a year after President Barack Obama’s repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy for gay soldiers.
Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said there’s a definite link between the repeal of DADT and the repeal of the sodomy law.
“It’s all about using the military to advance this administration’s radical social agenda,” Perkins told CNS News. “Not only did they overturn Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but they had another problem, and that is, under military law sodomy is illegal, just as adultery is illegal, so they had to remove that prohibition against sodomy.”
Perkins said removing the bestiality provision may have been intentional — or it may just have been “collateral damage.”
Former Army Col. Bob Maginnis told CNS News some military lawyers have indicated bestiality could be prosecuted under another section of the military code of justice — Article 134, for offenses against “good military order and discipline.” It’s not a sure bet, though.
“If we have a soldier who engages in sodomy with an animal — whether a government animal or a non-government animal — is it, in fact, a chargeable offense under the Uniform Code? I think that’s in question,” Maginnis said. “Soldiers, unfortunately, like it or not, have engaged in this type of behavior in the past. Will they in the future, if they remove this statute? I don’t know.”
The bill, which passed 93-7, now goes to a conference committee to be reconciled with the House of Representatives’ version of the bill. According to Perkins, the House version reinforced the Defense of Marriage Act, saying that there is a military Defense of Marriage Act as well, prohibiting same-sex marriage on military bases.
“And now this is an added concern, that sodomy has been removed, and as we have discovered, that bestiality — the prohibition against it — has been removed from the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So yes, the House will have problems with this bill,” Perkins predicted.