A couple of readers have raised an important complaint about my posts on this score from yesterday. They ask: When is sex with a dog not rape? To assert that the dog was raped suggests that under other circumstances — a nice ham bone, some chablis — amorous relations might have been consensual.

I think this is an excellent point. Peter Singer may believe you can woo animals into giving up the loving, I don’t. More important, I think this is a taboo which should remain a taboo without agonizing too much about why it is a taboo. “Ruff” never means “yes.”