Don't these states have laws against animal abuse or cruelty to animals? Wouldn't those laws apply?
I'm concerned about making new laws against bestiality because I'm not sure they distinguish between sexual predators, zoophiles, and relatively ordinary people who out of curiosity or desperation decide to experiment sexually with an animal--maybe as a one-time thing. I think there's a big difference between a guy who kidnaps and brutally rapes (sometimes injuring or killing) an animal, and a guy who in a moment of curiosity or horniness slathers butter on his cock and lets his pet dog lick it off, or the woman who lets her dog mount her.
The article mentioned a blind man who had sex with his seeing eye dog. Somehow I doubt that he forced the dog. I'm thinking this may be a lonely, socially isolated guy who in desperation turned to his only companion for sexual intimacy--an act with probably only further lowered his self-esteem. Knowing how loving and devoted dogs can be to their masters, I seriously doubt that this dog was injured or traumatized by the incident, especially if this was a bitch in heat. She may have been thrilled to have had that itch scratched, so to speak. (I recognize that this incident may indeed be a case of forced rape on an animal, I'm just trying to point out that there are a lot of other possibilities.)
Let me be clear that I'm not saying that it's OK for people to have sex with animals. Animals can't give informed consent, and can all too easily be coerced. But not all people who have sex with animals are sexual predators. I suspect that most are not. The majority of documented cases of bestiality may involve sexual predators, but that's because they are kidnapping and raping animals that don't belong to them, and getting caught in the process. Kinsey's research, which is of course questionable, is that 8% of men and 4% of women have had a sexual experience with an animal at least once in their lives. In the U.S. that's 12 million men and 6 million women. Even if that number is outrageously high, I suspect the real number is at least several thousand, versus a relatively small number of animal rape cases that occur around the country.
I'm not sure what we should do about people being caught having "pet sex," but I don't think those cases should be equated with the atrocities described in that linked article. Our goal should be to try to protect animals, not to punish people for being deviants or for experimenting sexually. To that end, I think the authorities should have to prove that the animal was harmed, which brings me back to my original point: Don't these states have laws against animal cruelty and shouldn't they apply? If they don't, wouldn't it make more sense to pass a law against animal cruelty (including forced sex with a human in the definition) rather than a law specifically against bestiality?