The White House is dodging questions about why a Senate defense authorization bill not only quietly overturned sanctions on sodomy between consenting adults (so as to allow gays to serve openly) but also dropped another provision in the U.S. military's criminal code: prohibitions against bestiality among military personnel.

When passing complex bills, it's not uncommon for strange items to unintentionally slip through -- things that never commanded much public attention until it was too late. A recent example: the Senate's repeal last Thursday of Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice which prohibited sodomy and bestiality. The Senate voted 93-7 for the defense authorization bill.

With its blanket repeal of Article 125, however, the Senate seems to have given a green light for military personnel to legally engage in bestiality -- an apparent slip-up (let's hope) that's going viral on the web thanks to World Net Daily reporter Lester Kinsolving having raised the issue on Monday at a White House news conference. Press secretary Jay Carney, however, declined to address the matter, and he all but dismissed Kinsolving as a crank -- amid chuckling and snide remarks from the White House press corps.

According to a White House transcript of the exchange:

KINSOLVING: The Family Research Council and CNS News both reported a 93-to-7 U.S. Senate vote to approve a defense authorization bill that, quote, "includes a provision which not only repeals the military law on sodomy, but also repeals the military ban on sex with animals, or beastiality (sic)." Does the commander-in-chief approve or disapprove of beastiality (sic) in our armed forces? 

CARNEY: I don't have any comment on--I don't have any comment on that. Let me go to another question.

KINSOLVING: Does the President believe this will be approved by all animal support groups, such as--

CARNEY: Let's get to something more serious.

Commenting on bestiality issue before Article 125 was repealed, the Family Research Council provided some interesting insights in an article amusingly titled, "Bestiality Should Give Leaders Paws in Troop Bill." The conservative lobbying group observed:

"The dust is finally starting to clear over the rubble of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal, and our military is beginning to see what's on the horizon: a campaign to radicalize the country from the Pentagon out. It started by toppling the barrier to open homosexuality. And it continues with an assault on marriage and religious freedom. Now, in its rush to accommodate the Left, Congress may have inadvertently opened the door to even more perversion. As part of the Defense Authorization bill, liberals are pushing to make sodomy a legal activity under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). In its haste to make gay sex an official part of military life, the Left could be unintentionally repealing the ban on bestiality too. Article 125 of the UCMJ, which Democrats are targeting, clearly states: "Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy."

The Family Research Council is not the only group raising alarm bells about the Obama administration's support for the dissolution of Article 125. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) also is upset and fired off a letter to Carney complaining about how he had "flippantly addressed the recently approved repeal of the military ban on bestiality."

"Our office has been flooded with calls from Americans who are upset that this ban has been repealed-and for good reason," PETA said. "As we outlined in the attached letter sent yesterday to the secretary of defense, animal abuse does not affect animals only -- it is also a matter of public safety, as people who abuse animals very often go on to abuse human beings."

Here's a video clip of Kinsolving's give-and-take with White House press secretary Jay Carney