While I have been all kinds of frustrated with our government of late–senators and congressional members completely forgetting the people they represent to play the game of politics like it was the Risk board spread out on the coffee table on a Saturday night–today was a day when the powers that be did something right. The president signed into law today the Merkley Crush Video Bill, introduced by Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley with Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Richard Burr (R-NC), which had passed the Senate unanimously last month. “Crush Videos” are recordings of people who torture and kill small animals by stepping on them. It is, evidently, a sexual fetish, so videos were being made of (mostly) women in high heels stepping on baby chicks or bunnies or mice or kittens or whatever…(sometimes also sitting on the animals to kill them, or crushing with bare feet).
As of today, the creation, sale, distribution, advertising, marketing, and exchange of animal crush videos is a crime, with penalties of up to seven years. That seems lenient to me, but I am pleased with the new law. I think folks should be able to get their yayas in just about any way they like, barring harming others…and for me, in spite of my virulent support of First Amendment rights and free speech, defining “others” as inclusive of sentient, non-human beings, works.
Change by Doing 