BEASTIALITY

[Angrboda]

I think there's a little bit of the Catholic response in our revulsion at the thought of bestiality. There's plain sex, and the further we get away from plain sex between a man and a woman, the more uncomfortable we feel. Sex that is a bit unusual is 'kinky', ie. not straight. It hasn't been that long since gay sex was considered abnormal, and sex with animals just takes strangeness one step further. There is a sense in which anything beyond just plain sex makes us nervous. Perhaps that's part of the thrill of fetishes like BDSM. At the same time, I think the Catholic response is a bit of a lie, as it hasn't been that long since the Catholic church endorsed arranged marriages. You can say what you want about the issue of consent in arranged marriages, it nevertheless is a significant deviation from a marriage united by love between a man and a woman. And that seems to be the norm that the encyclical is trying to use as justification for its moral stance; not the other.