PETA Rebukes White House for 'Flippantly' Dismissing Question on Senate's Vote to Legalize Bestiality in Military


PETA Rebukes White House for 'Flippantly' Dismissing Question on Senate's Vote to Legalize Bestiality in Military
By Pete Winn
December 8, 2011
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White House Press Secretary Jay Carney (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
(CNSNews.com) - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has written a letter to White House Press Secrtary Jay Carney rebuking him for "flippantly" dismissing a question he was asked at Monday's press briefing about last week's Senate vote approving a bill that would repeal the military's ban on bestiality.

PETA has also written to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asking him to make sure that language is added to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) to prohibit both bestiality and cruelty to animals.

A provision in the Defense authorization bill that passed the Senate last week by a 93-to-7 vote would strip the provision from the UCMJ that currently prohibits sodomy and bestiality.

In a letter to Carney, PETA President Ingrid Newkirk told the White House spokesman that the animal rights group was upset that Carney laughingly dismissed a reporter's question asking about the commander-in-chief’s position on bestiality.

(See CNSNews.com's story on the question and Carney’s response.)

"In watching last night's news briefing, we were upset to note that you flippantly addressed the recently approved repeal of the military ban on bestiality," Newkirk writes. "As we outlined in the attached letter sent yesterday to the Secretary of Defense, animal abuse does not affect animals only--it is also a matter of public safety, as people who abuse animals very often go on to abuse human beings."

"[M]illions of Americans are upset that animals no longer have even minimal protections under the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice]," the PETA president wrote.

"We hope that the public outcry against this inadvertent lapse will inspire the military to take action to make sure that it will be able to fully and appropriately serve and protect all Americans--human and nonhuman alike," Newkirk said.

In a separate letter, Newkirk told Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that "an emergency exists" and asked Panetta for his "immediate interventionâ€