Sometime in his illustrious and controversial career studying human sexuality, Alfred Kinsey said, “The only unnatural sexual act is that which you cannot perform.”

Take a second right now in your mind to compose a short list of “unperformable” acts. Don’t think too hard about it, just let them pop up. I’m not talking about, “I don’t like anal sex,” I mean, “I would NEVER, EVER, EVER BLANK.” Maybe you only like sex in one position with one partner once a month and that’s all. Or maybe even sex itself is deviant to you. Your list of unperformables is probably very long. For those of you with more adventurous proclivities, maybe your list of “absolutely NOT EVERs” is fairly short. But what I’m willing to bet is toward the top of many of our lists is one of society’s greatest no-nos: Bestiality.

Now, before you shit yourself — and I don’t blame you, by the way, for doing so — hear me out. A Google search of the word “zoophilia” brings up 1,580,000 hits. That’s an awful lot of websites devoted to a topic no one is supposed to talk about, much less fantasize about. So while this article is not in defense of the sexual act of bestiality, I want to use it to frame a larger, admittedly controversial, point of discussion: What if a taboo is not as unnatural as one might think?

At this point I’ll make a distinction between “zoophilia” and “bestiality.” We can define the latter as actual human-animal sexual contact. (You uncomfortable yet? Me too. Onward!) The former came about when Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the granddaddy of naming weird sex acts way back in the 1880s, used it to describe anything ranging from bestiality to simple sexual attraction.

For this article, I’ll use “zoophilia” to refer to the desire rather than to the act itself. Most of what I want to focus on here is not the actual sex. There are issues of legality that come into play that are outside the scope of this article, and I’m no expert.

The interesting thing about zoophilia — remember now, we’re just talking about the desire itself — is that, unlike say, sadomasochism, it is not viewed as a fetish. Rather, it’s a taboo. A hundred percent, no-fucking-WAY, one step from illegal, stigmatized sexual proclivity. Furries are the butt of jokes far and wide, but nobody even jokes about cross-species sexual desire, unless you’re telling “The Aristocrats.” It makes me uncomfortable just to type “human” and “animal” in the same sentence at this point.

But take a big leap with me for a minute. I can’t tell you whether actually having sex with an animal is morally wrong, because I’m not a moral barometer. Ol’ Kinsey had something going there, though, and to me, personally, diddling an animal is about one of the most unnatural things I can think of.

That is not to say, however, that it is unnatural for everyone. Remember those million and a half websites? Someone’s looking at them, and not just out of secret, grossed-out curiosity. (It’s OK, I know you’ve seen videos. Do the crossword so you can pretend you’re reading something else. I’ll wait.)

So is it wrong to look? Is it wrong to desire? What if zoophilia is as much a sexual orientation as hetero- or homosexuality? What if it is as much a sexual proclivity as an exclusive attraction to big breasts and long hair? We’re leaping here, remember. And what if it weren’t that big of a leap?

The difference, of course, between zoophilia and a penchant for titties is that one of those things is outlawed. No one tells a man or woman who only likes big breasts that anything is wrong. Certainly no one tells them they’re sick or twisted, and they will definitely not come under potential investigations. The point is, a person is born with a brain that is wired in a certain way to feel attractions to certain types of people. Is it too crazy to think that someone could be “wired” to feel an attraction to an animal?

And if it is too crazy — why? Assuming someone leads a “normal” life but busts out a ZooBook instead of a Hustler when they want to get off — what’s the harm?

Now, harm can happen where bestiality — not zoophilia, you with me? — is concerned. It is possible to hurt an animal quite badly via sexual contact, primarily because our junk and their junk don’t exactly match. This generally applies to men on the penetrative end. And anyone who professes to love animals, especially sexually or romantically, should have a problem with hurting them.

To be fair, I eat meat. I don’t ask cows or chickens how they feel about that, and, call me insensitive, I generally just avoid thinking about how they end up on my plate. So I know I’m contradicting myself when I say this, but I draw my line between killing an animal for sustenance and forcing one to endure prolonged pain so I can get my rocks off. But again, I’m not qualified to make a sweeping moral judgment here, nor do I want to.

There are laws in this country against bestiality, and while I generally get squicked out by laws regulating sexual freedoms, these make a bit of sense to me, primarily because people are morons. You may have heard of a now infamous case a few years ago where a man went to a ranch that catered to zoophiles and gave them access to animals for sexual purposes. This man was — for once, I’m sorry there’s no better way to put it — fucked by a horse, and subsequently died of related injuries. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but this man was also a moron.

I did another little Google search — God bless the internet! A.k.a. I hope I never come under criminal investigation — and found that the average horse penis is basically gigantic at about 22 inches. What in the hell was this man thinking? There has got to be a better way. Thus, because people apparently can’t make informed, intelligent decisions, there are laws to protect us.

Still, I can’t help but feel that we’re thinking about this the wrong way. I mean, you made it to the end. You actually read this. Why? Because we’ll never stop being interested, even only superficially, in the Dirty and the Wrong. Don’t forget that your fantasy might be another’s taboo — don’t forget that we’re all dirty and wrong to someone, somewhere.