You cited a specific case. It's not odd at all in the context of that case. The professionals in charge of enforcing the law decided the animals weren't harmed.
What I said, verbatim, about that case.
What part of that is incorrect or warrants clarification, exactly?
I appreciate your definition of abuse here but it's confusing in a discussion about legality.
No, it wasn't. The laws are quite explicit about what "abuse" means, and if you take a gander at most laws (including Washington state's circa 2000 or so) in the context of animals it usually explicitly refers to physical harm (for example, mutilation) or improper living conditions. Charging them under Washington's existing abuse laws would've required the animal to be physically injured, which it wasn't. It's quite literally why they had to pass a new law.
I don't know why I have to explain this, but:
1) Sexual abuse can occur without physical harm or injury.
2) Beastiality is sexual abuse.
Edit: Removed video link because the second half was gross and unrelated. May try finding another clip, but the first half was of Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks about a decade ago saying he'd legalize cases where the person pleasured the animal.
You didn't imply until now that I was wrong about animal abuse already being illegal. In that case, a bestiality law doesn't fix the actual problem, right? It's a band-aid partial fix.
1) Beastiality isn't sexual abuse
2) Beastiality laws are pointless because it was already illegal under existing abuse laws (it wasn't, as we've repeatedly discussed)
3) Sexual abuse requires physical harm
all of which are pretty gross (1,3) and/or pointless (2). I don't really feel the need to argue any of this any further, so I'll leave you to it.
And that's not a pointless argument. If we're still allowing the whole category of non-physical abuse to animals, except for bestiality, that's a terrible job of lawmaking.
And just on a tangent here now that I'm reading the law they added, does it really make sense to have a blanket exemption for "accepted animal husbandry practices"? Some of those procedures are just as exploitative and unnecessary. It makes me think this law isn't putting animal welfare first.
For some reason with people it goes the other way around.