''People are taking these animals as their husbands? What's husbandry?''

Debate over a Florida bill to outlaw bestiality—it's one of 16 states that don't forbid the practice—produced this extraordinary and unintentionally hilarious exchange:

[State Sen. Nan] Rich's legislation would target only those who derived or helped others derive ''sexual gratification'' from an animal, specifying that conventional dog-judging contests and animal-husbandry practices are permissible.

That last provision tripped up Miami Democratic Sen. Larcenia Bullard.

''People are taking these animals as their husbands? What's husbandry?'' she asked. Some senators stifled their laughter as Sen. Charlie Dean, an Inverness Republican, explained that husbandry is raising and caring for animals. Bullard didn't get it.

''So that maybe was the reason the lady was so upset about that monkey?'' Bullard asked, referring to a Connecticut case where a woman's suburban chimpanzee went mad and was shot.

Whole thing here.

Via Walter Olson's indispensable Overlawyered.com, where he comments, "'Larcenia' is probably the most perfect first name for a politician I've ever heard."

Comments

[Lost_In_Translation]

This scourge across our land must be obliterated!!!

While you're at it, could you ban S&M, farting in a closed elevator and talking at the theatre...

[Pro Libertate]

Certainly, animal husbandry between consenting sentients should be legal.

[Warren]

Goddamnit. Oh well there goes your Florida doggie sex tourism trade.

I'm sure this law will put an end to all the man beast love currently raging unchecked in the Sunshine State.

[Ironic]

Politicians are getting more idiotic by the day.

[jasa]

Didn't realize the senate had a "help the handicapped" program within their own ranks.

[Pro Libertate]

Warren,

You laugh, but don't you wonder why Florida is one of the few states lacking such laws? Do the words "giant rat that bestrides the state like colossus" mean anything to you?

[SpongePaul]

''People are taking these animals as their husbands? What's husbandry?'' she asked.
_________________________________________
AND YET WITHOUT A HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION OR AN 8TH GRADE UNDERSTANDING OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, SEN BULLARD MANAGED TO BECOME A POLITICIAN AND GET ELECTED!

[servant]

Someone needs to immortalize that incident on her Wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larcenia_Bullard

[SpongePaul]

I guess they can no longer hire Kelly and the Sexy Stud for going away parties in FL anymore! HEY

[Randall]

Where's Kelly?

[McKolohe]

Ms. Bullard's aide was asked to obtain a Latin-English dictionary for to the senator's next trip to Latin America.

[Pro Libertate]

"Ladies and gentlemen. . . . Taffey Lewis presents. . .Miss Salome and the snake. Watch her take the pleasures from the serpent. . .that once corrupted man."

[the innominate one]

Florida - we're thankful for Louisiana and Mississippi making us look relatively good

[Fluffy]

Usually I'm pretty brutal about people who lack basic knowledge of this kind, but I'd like to point out that at least she asked for help with a word she didn't understand.

Usually in this situations people make up a meaning and then stick to it even when corrected. If she was Joe, she would have continued to insist that the bill was allowing people to take animals as husbands, and when confronted with evidence of her error she would have argued that Meaning was negotiated between speaker and listener, so if she thought it meant marriage to animals that's what it meant, blah blah blah blah blah.

Let's not mock her too ferociously, as a tribute to the fact that she owned up to not knowing what the word meant and asked for help.

[Vines & Cattle]

Can a lesbian goat take a husband?

[SpongePaul]

Kelly can be a guys name too... HEY

[Pro Libertate]

Vines & Cattle,

No, that's not permitted.

the innominate one,

Florida is a weird state. It can be loony like California, then it can be advanced beyond most states, even in the libertarian sense, on occasion. It befuddles me, and I've been here for most of my life.

[sexy stud]

Interspecies erotica, fucko!

[O\'Taktix?]

I'm sure this law will put an end to all the man beast love currently raging unchecked in the Sunshine State.

You ain't kidding. It takes me probably 30 minutes to drive the four mile to my house after work each day, having to swerve around pig-fuckers fucking pigs right in the street.

I'm close to the beach, though...

[the innominate one]

Pro Lib - same here, and I've lived in Florida my entire life

[Pro Libertate]

Will this affect the Urkobold's alligator-human (Gatormensch) breeding program? It's being conducted in Florida.

[Obama]

You folks wouldn't be making these jokes if the woman were WHITE!

[ed]

I'll bet Larcenia takes great umbrage at the word "niggardly" as well.

[Vines & Cattle]

Bullard is a perfect example of why universal vo-ag education is a much higher priority than universal pre-k.

[Larcenia]

It's a well known fact that the word "picnic" is a racist term referring to lynchings. In my district, we only have cook outs.

[ed]

Don't be gettin' sassy now, Larcenia.

[emerson]

I'm fine with a man marrying a goat, but what kind of kids will they have?

[Pro Libertate]

emerson,

Stop kidding around.

[ChicagoTom]

Stop kidding around.

BOO!! Bad pun.

So what is the standard libertarian position on bestiality ? Is it a matter of lacking consent?

[Pro Libertate]

ChicagoTom,

So long as the paw print is on the consent certificate, no problem. Enjoy!

No, wait. That's gross.

[Lost_In_Translation]

hey you two, quit the horseplay, this is serious, these are foal behaviors that must not mare this great state. Now quit stallion and get back to work.

[Lost_In_Translation]

ChicagoTom,

The question is what's the punishment going to be. Isn't it tradition to kill the animal (euthenize) and then either fine, jail the person. I assume they will then have to register as a sex offender. I think the law opens a greater can of worms than it solves when someone gets caught. I mean, wtf do you do with someone caught fucking a cow?

[brotherben]

Chi Tom,

Doggie style .

[MacKraut]

But if you outlaw animal husbandry, only the animals will have husbands!

[Mad Max]

According to her legislative Web page, Senator Bullard is Vice-Chair of the Agriculture Committee, and is a member of the Policy and Steering Committee on Energy, Environment, and Land Use.

Her 'occupation' is listed as 'Former teacher and administrator, education consultant, community activist.'

[Episiarch]

I mean, wtf do you do with someone caught fucking a cow?

You laugh really, really hard. Or, if it's Tijuana and there's a donkey involved, you tip your waitress.

[AlanS]

Max Max wrote:

"Her 'occupation' is listed as 'Former teacher and administrator, education consultant, community activist.'"

And we know how well being a community organizer prepares you for a career in politics.

[brotherben]

AlanS, any future comments against our president will be proof of your latent maniacal racist tendencies.

[JP]

According to her legislative Web page, Senator Bullard is Vice-Chair of the Agriculture Committee

Oh, that's OK then. Now, if she were Chair, then we might have a problem.

[John C. Randolph]

There is an old saying: "it is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

I guess that goes double for office holders.

-jcr

[anarch]

If animal husbandry is outlawed, only hussy in-laws will ban anime.

Which is how it is anyway.

[Tom Lehrer]

"[Dr. Samuel Gall's] educational career began interestingly enough in agricultural school, where he majored in animal husbandry, until they... caught him at it one day." --Tom Lehrer

[juris imprudent]

I'm fine with a man marrying a goat, but what kind of kids will they have?

Probably some baaahhh-aaaaaad ones.

[Henry Miller]

This kind.

[economist]

Who hates their child enough to name her "Larcenia"? I rate that somewhere between naming one's child Jabba and naming it Adolph H.

[JB]

What a dumb bitch!

[Abdul]

I checked Larcenia Bullard's bio: former public school teacher.

Also lists as a hobby, and I'm not making this up, "collecting butterfly-shaped objects.

I won't say these things make her stupid, but I will say that she's more of a target demographic for "Wheel of Fortune" than for "Jeopardy."

[stubby]

I'm fine with a man marrying a goat, but what kind of kids will they have?

Reminds me of one of my college roommates, a very high-IQ girl from a Catholic girls' school (this was in Louisiana) - she entered LSU as a junior. Brilliant, bilingual, well-read, and with absolutely no idea of life on Planet Earth. Naive doesn't begin to describe it.

So we were telling her about the Dekes, the fraternity that was always in trouble for things that seemed truly scandalous in the 80s. Legend had it that Deke pledges had to fuck a goat as part (only part, mind you) of initiation.

And her main concern, of course, was with the poor goat and any resulting goat-Deke hybrid. What would they do if the goat got pregnant?

When I was 18, there were very few people who made me seem worldly in comparison, and I appreciated her for it.

My first romance novella will be published this summer. No goat sex.

[Butts Wagner]

Florida: Leading the nation in female middle and high school teachers falling in love with their at least twice held back male students.

[Abdul]

Legend had it that Deke pledges had to fuck a goat as part (only part, mind you) of initiation.

And her main concern, of course, was with the poor goat and any resulting goat-Deke hybrid. What would they do if the goat got pregnant?

It seems that's where the second part of the initiation kicks in.

but the moral dilemma now presented is if abortion is wrong because it ends a human life, is it still wrong if the life is only part human and part frat boy?

[Jack McHugh]

From MichiganVotes.org:

2009 House Bill 4570 (Place animal sodomites on sex offender registry)

Introduced by Rep. Rick Jones (R) on March 12, 2009, to require a person convicted of sodomy of an animal (bestiality) to be included on the state sex offender registry.

Referred to the House Judiciary Committee on March 12, 2009.

[Invictus]

I hear it will be legal in Massachusetts any day now.

On another topic, why is beastiality illegal anyway? You can eat and wear animals, but fucking them is crossing the line? Given the choice of being a hamburger or sexually inconvenienced seems to be rather obvious...

[Randy]

So what is the standard libertarian position on bestiality ?

doggie style....

[Joe]

So what is the standard libertarian position on bestiality ?

Well, the idea that you can stop people from doing it is illusory anyway. You can catch the mentally ill doing it in in broad daylight on main street, or the inexperienced teenager who's never done it before and thus isn't careful, and ruin their lives as an example to others, sure. But the only way to really stop it is to have a full-on surveillance state watching every animal indoors and out. Which doesn't exactly mesh with a libertarian ideal.

(Bit of trivia I heard in college: the Inca used to use llamas for moving cargo around the Andes, and apparently they got concerned about the llama-handlers boinking their charges enroute, so to enforce their new rule of No Llama-Boinking, they set up a system whereby a kind of chaperone would come along on every route. I wondered how many llama-buggery-curious guys ran to sign up for official llama-chaperone duty.)

[Robert]

"Larcenia Bullard" is a name Jean P. Shepherd would've made up -- or used if he didn't have to make it up.

[Joel]

Do the words "giant rat that bestrides the state like colossus" mean anything to you?

I believe Ms. Bullard has already been mentioned.

("Larcenia"! BWAAAAhahahahaha...

[pilferzilla]

Great name for a kleptocrat, Larcenia.

[zoltan]

A better way to stop the llama boinkers would be to insert a RAPEX into a random llama and not tell them which one it's in.

[Art-P.O.G.]

:::facepalm::: [insert disclaimer about Florida]

[Barry]

As someone with experience with Catholic School girls from Louisiana (I come from a long line of them) the Frat/goat hybrid story doesn't suprise me at all.
If Larcinia had an R, rather than a D next to her name, how much you wanna bet this would be the first story up on the Daily Show and CNN?

[Kreel Sarloo]

If Larcinia had an R, rather than a D next to her name, how much you wanna bet this would be the first story up on the Daily Show and CNN?

Several comments at one site where I saw this story were on the order of "see how stoopid rethuglicans are, hehehehe!!!!!". With respect to both Larcenia's faux pas and the introduction of the bill itself.

This, in spite of the fact that the story clearly identifies Larcenia and rep who introduced the bill as Democrats.