18. Beastiality (Remastered)

Bestiality

R.J. Rushdoony

Let us pray.

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Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee again for thy marvelous and providential care. We thank thee, our Father, that day after day thou hast sustained, blessed, and protected us. And so, our God we come into thy presence with thanksgiving. We come also mindful, our Father, that one of our number has gone home to be with thee. We thank thee for Virginia and for her faith. And we thank thee our Father that now she has eternal life, and the joy of reunion with loved ones long since gone. We pray that thou would be with Phil and with all her loved ones, to comfort and to strengthen them, and day by day to sustain them with thy grace. We give thanks unto thee, our Father that, thou art ever near, a very present help in time of need therefore, we will not fear, though the earth be moved, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. For thou the Lord of hosts are with us, thou art our refuge. Our God, we thank thee. In Jesus' name. Amen.

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Our Scripture is from Leviticus 18:23-30, and our subject, ‘Bestiality.’ Leviticus 18:23-30.

“Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion. Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you: (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;) That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people. Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not any one of these abominable customs, which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the Lord your God.”

The crime of bestiality is cited not only in this passage, but also in Exodus 22:19, in Leviticus 20:15-16, and in Deuteronomy 27:21. As our Scripture cited, it was the practice of the Canaanite nations that were cast out before Israel. The death penalty is required for this offense for both man and beast. If the death penalty is not afflicted for this and for other perversions, the land is polluted, and the earth, God declares, vomits out the degenerate people. According to Scripture when Adam and Eve fell, the whole earth felt the effect of the fall, the earth shared in the consequences of man’s sin, and it reacts to man’s degeneracy. Beyond a certain point the earth itself is polluted and it casts out, it vomits out its inhabitants.

Now, bestiality is common to many nations of antiquity, but only to the advanced cultures. Nowadays its treated as though, “Well it was a phase in man’s evolution” and we are told it belongs to backward peoples. We do not find it for example in the ‘primitive,’ so-called ‘primitive’ or backward cultures of Africa or of the Americas, but rather in advanced cultures of antiquity and of today. In every state where we encounter it, it is a religious practice.

The rationale of it, I dealt with in my study The Religion of Revolution. Every non-Biblical state is evolutionary. There is no doctrine of creation outside of the Bible. Now, an evolutionary faith believes that man rose out of a primeval chaos so that the source of man, the source of the world, of all being, is out of chaos. Now, where man sees the source of all things and the power of all things, there he looks for regeneration, for revival, for renewal. And if man believes in terms of the doctrine of evolution, that chaos is the source of all things; he looks to chaos for renewal. He looks downwards for vigor and strength, for power and vitality, not upward. 

As a result, the basic religious revival of the ancient world was the Saturnalia. It went by different names in different cultures, but it was a time of national and personal renewal, regeneration. It was the great official, requiredrevival meeting of all the pagan nations of antiquity.

During the Saturnalia, which went by different names in different countries, all normal law and order was abolished. A condemned convict was taken out of the prison and made the king during the festival. The requirement of the saturnalia was obligatory adultery, incest, homosexuality, bestiality, every kind of perversion imaginable. Why? Because these were acts of chaos, of confusion, or as ‘confusion’ can also be translated, perversion. And since chaos was the source of creation, the source of the universe, that which where power was to be found. And so, the ‘revival’ of the ancient world was this Saturnalia with all its religious perversions.

As a result, as apostate man in the ancient world developed his culture and his religion, he developed bestiality as a religious rite. So we find it only in the advanced civilizations. Their position was logical. If God is God, if God indeed, as Scripture declares, created Heaven and earth and all things therein, then man must look upward to God for regeneration, for guidance, for strength. And man must then conform himself to God’s Law-Word. But if chaos is ultimate, and all things evolved out of chaos, then man must look downward to chaos for his strength and for his regeneration. Bestiality was thus important to developed paganism. It was not, as I have already stated, found in the simple, backward tribe. It was prominent in advanced pagan cultures. And because of the doctrine of evolution, it is again becoming prominent in our culture. It is practiced as a matter of principle in a variety of groups. It is still sub rosa, but increasingly, books are written to advocate this practice, and these books unfortunately are written by doctors and psychiatrists. It is increasingly promoted in literature, and now also in some movies. In fact there is a current movie, it has not appeared here, the whole theme of which is bestiality. However, there were legal forces at work to prevent anything being shown in the picture, it was the FCPA. It stepped in to protect the pig in the case. Nothing, of course, has been done by the law to protect the people who will see the film.

There is moreover, a long history of association of bestiality with revolutionary movement, and with good reason because the whole thesis of revolution in the modern age, as well as in the ancient world, is social regeneration through total chaos; destroy everything, have total chaos, and you will have paradise coming forth. And of course Marx has no program for the post-revolutionary world. Marx’s program was total revolution, destroy everything, and then automatically, paradise will emerge.

As a result, revolutionary movements, because of their faith in chaos, have very commonly been involved in a variety of perversions, including bestiality. It is interesting to note how many of the defectors have been involved in such acts. A few years ago two very prominent members of the United States National Security Agency suddenly defected and went behind the Iron Curtain. After they defected it was revealed but very quickly hushed up that both were homosexuals and both given very strongly to acts of bestiality.

The present sexual revolution is experimenting extensively with this vice. Dr. Ullerstam, whom I have cited previously, has pleaded for abolition of this “moral yoke,” to use his expression, the prohibition against acts of bestiality, and vindicate the acts as more and more righteous. The Bible calls this act “confusion,” or, as the Berkeley version translates it, “perversion.” 

Now, the element of perversion is basic to the act. In other words, man is confirming in this act his faith that chaos is ultimate, that chaos is the source of revival, of regeneration. But he is also thereby saying he is anti-God, and so he is deliberately denying the Law of God, denying that God is a creator. Thus, the element of deliberate perversion is always basic to the act and to the religious aspect of the act.

For example, we are all familiar with the common expression, “cleanliness is next to godliness.” It comes out of the Puritans. But today those who are denying godliness, are also denying cleanliness, are they not? Very systematically. The Marquis de Sade, in one of his major works, gives a long catalog of some pages of a variety of acts of bestiality and the variety of animals he used and justified this as well. ⁱ I hesitate to speak of it, but this is also an aspect of the underworld of revolution of our day. He justified the eating of human waste as an erotic pleasure. And he declared that it is, I am quoting him, “the very uncleanness of the act” ⁱⁱ which pleased him. It was defiling himself, and because man was supposed to be the image of God, it was a way of defiling, he felt, God Himself.

Now some years ago, in the twenties and thirties, there was a writer on the staff of the New Republic, Kenneth Burke who, like all those associated with the New Republic, was very much to the Left. But Kenneth Burke wrote an essay once in which he described some of the things that were taking place around him and which disturbed him. While we cannot agree with his atheistic framework, we can agree with him in saying that he put his finger on what was going on and gave it the right name.

Kenneth Burke said that there was kind of new revivalism afoot in the modern world, and what was it? It was a belief in conversion downward. What these practitioners of the old school, he said, were practicing, was revival upward. That is, conforming man, converting man, to God. But the new revivalism, he said, “Is conversion downward.” ⁱⁱⁱ This conversion downward is an extensive fact of modern life and education, of modern religion. Vitality is sought downward, and it seen as the source of strength, as the cure-all for everything, for society; revolution, chaos, for man. So that, for male impotence; “practice a perversion, that will renew you!” Wherever you turn, you find that the new school is advocating this conversion downward as the source of renewal. And it is being done more and more openly.

It is very interesting that in the last few years, the movie being advertised very extensively in our newspapers, big ads, is simply titled: The Marquis de Sade. And it presets him as a visionary and a revolutionary. He was, incidentally, not only the most total pervert in all of history, but an ugly, fat, toad of a person; totally repulsive.

So this is what it said: 

“Here was an attitude of the twentieth century born in the eighteenth century. Behind the legend of twisted cruelty and evil [They were not legends, they were true. - RJR] were his prophetic theory of personal liberty. Behind the condemned writings were the attacks on a degenerate establishment. [It was on a Christian establishment.] Arrested for criminal outrages, imprisoned for running away with his wife’s sister, condemned to the guillotine during the French Revolution, he spent nearly half his life behind bars. And yet he never lost the conviction that wars and repressions were the orgies beyond all orgy. ‘Kill me or take me as I am, for I shall not change,’ said de Sade.”

Of course, de Sade was not against wars, in fact he felt that murder was perfectly legitimate, it was infringing on your civil liberties or personal liberties if you were denied the right to kill at will.

Now, here is the prize pervert of all history, given to eating human waste and given to bestiality, glorying in it, who is portrayed now as the prophet of the twentieth century and as the great champion of liberty, and a handsome man used to depict one of the ugliest, physically ugliest characters of the modern world. And what is the purpose of this film? And almost any film on the movie pages of the paper in the last week or two? Conversion downward, conversion downward.

This, of course, explains the Marquis de Sade. His pleasure in the very uncleanness of the act. The greater the confusion or perversion, the greater the delight. There was a desire on his part, as well as on the part of many such people today, to prove that man is no more than an animal. This desire to reduce man to an animal is a part of the evolutionary faith of our Day. 

One of the most popular books of the last two years was Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape. In February of 1968 it was the book of the month club selection. The whole thesis of the book was of course, that man is a product of evolution and, he is simply another ape. Now of course another book has been written to prove that the apes are really more human than men.

A part of this same kind of thinking was behind a major scientific expedition of the Soviet Union. I made passing reference to this a few weeks ago. In 1925, not too long after the revolution, a large number of Soviet scientists were heavily subsidized by the Soviet Union, and sent to Africa in order to prove that evolution was true by crossing men and apes. This expedition was headed by professor Ilya Ivanovich Ivanoff. Of course, the whole thing was an abysmal and total failure. When they returned a year later the Soviet Union declared that the ship was lost with all hands and apes in the Black Sea so that there were no survivors they declared. In other words, no one was allowed to live in order to report the fiasco.

Today this faith is systematically propagated far more than most people realize by a variety of books, pornographic movies, and instruction books. The systematic propagation of this faith is a part of the belief in conversion downward. And this is logical; if man does not believe in God, humanistic man must then look downward for his revival, for his regeneration and what he will do thereby is to turn the world into chaos, but we, in terms of God's regenerating power and His Law-Word, must turn ourselves and this world into conformity to God. We must look upward all the more. We must apply the Law-Word of God to every area of life, bring every sphere of thought into captivity to God, whether in church, state, school or everyday life. Neither man nor society can ever stand still. They either move in terms of conforming themselves to God, in terms of conversion upward, or in terms of conversion downward.

When a generation makes a man like the Marquis de Sade its prophet, when books are written in numbers every year glorifying him and plays are playing glorifying him, and now movies presenting him as “the prophet of our age,” we know that judgement is near on this generation. That they are polluting the land, and God will bring judgment upon them. All the more it behooves us there as believers in the whole council of God to declare that whole council, and to summon every sphere of life into conformity with the Law-Word of God.

Let us pray. 

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Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee for thy sovereign Word. We thank thee that thou art on the throne and that thy judgment is sure. We thank thee, our Father, that thou who didst cast out the Canaanite and did bring judgement upon the Roman Empire, Babylon and Assyria of old, thou art unchanged still; thine arm has not become shortened, nor thy power diminished. So, our God, we await thy judgment. Strengthen us and prepare us, our Father, in the difficult days ahead, for the task of Christian Reconstruction that we may bring ourselves, our institutions, our families, everything into conformity to thy Law-Word so that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. Bless us to this purpose, we beseech thee. In Jesus' name. Amen.

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Are there any questions now?

Yes?

[Audience Member] The liberal churches talk about conversion, don’t they? ^iv

[Rushdoony] Yes, its true, but realize too what they put into their heads Sunday mornings because today they are using the language of “conversion,” and being “born-again” and so on, but they are pouring a new content in it in terms of conversion downwards. They have divisions of evangelism, they talk about all the things that evangelicals do, but they put a new meaning in the words, and it is in terms of conversion downward. That is why they can espouse revolution, and one at the same time, it is a part of their evangelism.

What does the evangelism and the revival, and the rebirth they talk about mean? Into a social conscience. It means that if you are born-again, you get into the revolution. It’s a conversion downward; you replace law with love. You become “spirit filled,” which means that you are beyond the Word, and beyond Law; you are now in the third age, as it were. This we will have in the philosophy series with the Tuesday morning study club. But this kind of language is consistently used, and you find in the Billy Graham crusades that there is a merging, a buzzing, a shaving off between the conversion upward and the conversion downward; they are somehow being brought together because recently at a conference his associates spoke on the need for a revolutionary evangelism, and Billy Graham said, “amen,” at the conclusion to everything his associate said.

But very definitely your contemporary evangelism in the major churches is oriented to this conversion downward because for them there is no God above.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Is the sinner trying to be like Christ? ^v

[Rushdoony] The sinner is never trying to be like Christ, he is against Christ, he is moving in the other direction. So to speak of anyone, young or old who is not in Christ as though they are trying to be like Him in any sense is ridiculous.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Is it true that the Apostles and Jesus had long hair, Dr. Rushdoony? ^vi

[Rushdoony] No, the short hair was very definitely the commonplace thing at the time of our Lord, very, very short. We know from pictures of the period, from staturaries, from accounts of the period, that as a matter of fact the hair was worn exceedingly short, and the usual style was, it was too short to comb, except just to brush it forward. In Rome they were usually clean shaven, and in most of the empire, some of the Hebrews were that way, some were bearded. But by and large very short hair was the rule. And it was not uncommon for them to shave it off periodically and just let it grow to a short length.

Yes? 

[Audience Member] Long hair is wrong, then? ^vii

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, St. Paul makes this clear, that it is a disgrace in a man. So that, you know from St. Paul’s statement that this was not the practice in the day, so that he could say: ‘This is something that everybody knows, that short hair is natural to a man, and long hair to a woman.” Now he wouldn’t have said that if there were any variations of practice then, there were none.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Alexander the Great’s men were clean-shaven. ^viii

[Rushdoony] It is true, Alexander the great had his men clean shaven, I think partly it was personal preference on his part, and partly he used the excuse that in battle no one can grab your beard. Well, if they are close enough to grab your beard and then stab you, they are too close anyway, you don’t let anyone get that close so he can do it. He used that excuse, but Alexander was clean shaven, and his army, by and large, was.

Yes?

[Audience Member] I heard a dirty hippie say that he was a descendant of God. ^ix

[Rushdoony] Well, this is the kind of blasphemy that has been increasingly prominent. You see, as I pointed out some time ago, the Joachimite movement, which began in the latter part of the Middle Ages under the leadership of the Abbot Joachim of Flora, propagated an idea that is increasingly popular in our age. And the thesis of the Abbot Joachim was that the history of the world could be divided into three ages. The first was the age of the Father and of the Law, the Old Testament age. The second was the age of the Son and of grace. The third age is the death of God age and the age of the Spirit when every man is his own God, and every man is filled with the Spirit and is himself perfect and all-loving and so on. Now, this third-age mentality has infected every aspect of our life today; it is in Hegel’s philosophy of a hundred and seventy years ago, and it infected Karl Marx; it has infected the churches, so that the churches… well, you had the Pentecostal movement, which in its early days was quite vocal about being anti-Scripture; you weren’t bound by the letter, you were “filled with the Spirit.”

And of course, even evangelicalism is very largely infected by this belief that it has to be beyond the law. We are in the realm of the Spirit, in the age of the Spirit, and what we need is a Spirit-filled kind of religion which somehow is above and beyond Scripture. And it is above and beyond meeting the daily responsibilities that God lays upon us. It is a demonic thing, it has done much harm to the cause of Christ, and we need to get back to the whole council of God.

It is three age philosophy, from the beginning, has been a death of God philosophy. And unfortunately there is not an area of our modern world where this third age philosophy or this third world philosophy is not to be found to some degree.

i. The Marquis de Sade. The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings. Translated by Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver. New York: Grove Press, 1966, 603f.

ii. The Marquis de Sade. The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings. Translated by Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver. New York: Grove Press, 1966, p. 462f.

iii. Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change, An Anatomy of Purpose (New York: New Republic, 1935), p. 166.

iv. The Marquis de Sade. The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings. Translated by Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver. New York: Grove Press, 1966.

v.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

viii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

ix.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.