Editor’s Note: This column refers to issues of bestiality, bisexuality and homosexuality. It may not be appropriate for young or sensitive readers.In November, on the other side of the big lake, David Blunkett, Britain’s home secretary, announced the government’s plans to set in law a new sexual morality. The blueprint paper, “Protecting the Public,” is typical Blairite arrogance, believing that a new sexual morality could be codified overnight. The paper admits the Labour Party’s thoroughly modern position by claiming, “The law on sex offences is widely recognized as archaic, incoherent and discriminatory.” So it is not surprising to see that Blunkett and Prime Minister Tony Blair are liberalizing many laws, including the sexual harassment of males by other males (previously known as cottaging) and exempting streakers at sporting events from prosecution for indecent exposure.

But most perplexing of the changes is liberalization of the law regarding bestiality, about which the paper admits widespread recognition that it is “profounding disturbing behaviour,” before going on to lie that the new law would be tougher on such crimes. Under Clause 79, “A new offence of bestiality … will carry a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment.” Fine and dandy, but the existing law, the Sex Offences Act of 1956, allows for life imprisonment for buggery, which British custom defines as sexual congress with an animal. How the new rules are tougher, is beyond explanation.

But one wonders: why the change? What constituency is demanding the liberalization of such laws?

Ross Clark, writing in The Spectator, says that “zoo couples” – practitioners prefer zoophilia over the more derogatory bestiality – will be the “next big equality issue.” Certainly, the fact that there are spokesmen for the cause who demand that it be referred to as zoophilia instead of bestiality, is proof that such a movement is afoot.

Clark reports that “Zoos,” as they preferred to be called, are already adopting the language of victim politics used by the “gay pride” campaigners a generation ago. He also reports that one zoophilia website says that, “Zoosexuality is an orientation in the same category as hetero, homo and bisexual,” and “We do not choose zoo – it is a part of us.”

One would expect that bestiality, a sick perversion, would be, as one wit has said, the love that dare not bark its name. It would seem highly unlikely that anyone would come forward to admit an attraction to animals. It is one thing for a Princeton professor (the infamous Peter Singer) to write in favour of sex with animals in a radical online website, but quite another for a normal human being to admit that he engages in such behaviour. Yet, one-third of the submissions on bestiality to the British government when it began the consultative process two years ago, were in favour of abolishing all restrictions on sex with animals.

Clark warns to never underestimate the power of vocal minorities in a democracy such as England’s – or ours, I hasten to add.

Another tiny but vocal minority – although presumably one larger than the zoophilia community – that has moved the Blair government to action, is the gay rights crowd. In December, Barbara Roche, the minister for social exclusion and equalities – a fob for the feminist and gay rights movements – said that she will extend marriage rights to homosexual and bisexual couples. It is unclear if a bisexual couple is really a threesome, but the idea of a bisexual having marriage rights to just one sex seems terribly unfair. (I am joking.)

Roche’s announcement led the London Telegraph’s Tom Utley to wonder: why limit marriage rights to homosexuals? “Mighty odd,” Utley wrote, “that it should come down so hard on one form of unnatural sexual activity, while getting all dewy-eyed about another.” Why not, Utley asks, allow zoophiles to marry an animal?

Why not, indeed? Having obliterated the purpose of marriage – the union of a man and woman to bear and nurture the next generation – there is no reason to limit marriage rights at all.

For some radicals, that may be the point. Several years ago, when I was a mere freelance hack, I interviewed Peter Stock, then a representative of the Canadian Family Action Coalition, on the issue of same-sex marriage for a story in this paper. He said that the end-game for the gay-rights lobby was not same-sex marriage but the destruction of traditional morality; it was not about heterosexuality or homosexuality, marriage or non-marriage, but pansexualism.

Back then, I thought Stock was overstating the case. I now consider him prophetic.

The sexual revolution was not about liberating people from traditional morality; it was about destroying traditional morality. We see that in the British proposal to change the sex laws.

The law is used to reinforce or change social mores. The Blair government knows this. So does ours. When our Justice Minister Martin Cauchon proposes the terrible injustice of redefining marriage to be more inclusive of homosexuals, he is proposing to create a new morality in which homosexuality is not merely tolerated but normalized.

I presume neither government wants to deliberately throw away all vestiges of morality and usher in an era of anything goes. But, I’m afraid, that is where we are headed.