alt Hacker News> yes it was illegal to sexually abuse animals
No, it wasn't. The laws are quite explicit about what "abuse" means, and if you take a gander at most laws (including Washington state's circa 2000 or so) in the context of animals it usually explicitly refers to physical harm (for example, mutilation) or improper living conditions. Charging them under Washington's existing abuse laws would've required the animal to be physically injured, which it wasn't. It's quite literally why they had to pass a new law.
I don't know why I have to explain this, but:
1) Sexual abuse can occur without physical harm or injury.
2) Beastiality is sexual abuse.
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And my point is that sexual abuse is a subcategory of abuse.
You didn't imply until now that I was wrong about animal abuse already being illegal. In that case, a bestiality law doesn't fix the actual problem, right? It's a band-aid partial fix.
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#2 can be split into two sides, and not everyone believes one of those is sexual abuse.
Edit: Removed video link because the second half was gross and unrelated. May try finding another clip, but the first half was of Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks about a decade ago saying he'd legalize cases where the person pleasured the animal.
Edit2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QUUcQqBkJA