Bestiality, Animal Rights, and Veganism

Is bestiality wrong? If so, based on what reasoning? Something cannot be wrong just because it is wrong, there must be reasoning behind it. One might say, “It is wrong because it hurts the animals.” But surely there can be sexual interaction between people and animals that animals enjoy. For example: dogs often enjoy humping people (or anything really); if a person allowed dog to hump them, would this not be bestiality? If it is bestiality, yet the dog is enjoying it, doesn’t this mean that not all bestiality is harmful to animals? And thus, bestiality is only wrong when it is harmful to animals? One might argue, bestiality is still wrong even when it is not harmful to animals. However, there must still be reasoning to back up the wrongness of something. One might say, “It is wrong because you are taking advantage of them.” Or, “You are betraying their trust. The animal depends on you, it trusts that will do what’s in its best interest.”  But this argument relies on the premise that bestiality is wrong, which is exactly what it is supposed to be arguing for. It is circular logic. A dog doesn’t have the same dogma we do. It sees nothing wrong with humping anything, and has no shame or hesitation in doing it. It is our own sexual taboo, and if there is no argument against bestiality that is not harmful to animals, then the taboo is baseless and bestiality would thereby not be wrong. One might say, “It is wrong because it exploits the innocence and ignorance of the animals.” One might worry that the animals involved in bestiality are being objectified. Is this necessarily true? If so, is this necessarily wrong?

An issue directly related to this would be the treatment of animals used for food and for scientific testing (especially in America). If one is concerned about the safety and well-being of animals, these would be the first things needing to be examined. If one believed bestiality was wrong because of the betrayal of trust of the animals, or the exploitation of their innocence and ignorance, then one should consider the betrayal of trust and exploitation of trust and innocence involved in killing animals for food. Someone might argue, “No, it is not the same because there is more trust between an owner and a pet, than an owner and a farm-animal.” But what if the owner had a close and trusting relationship with a farm-animal? Would it then be wrong to kill the animal? Following this logic would have you conclude that it is immoral to have a close relationship with a farm animal; however, having a close relationship is with a person is something that many animals enjoy; it would be something that would improve the quality of life of the animal, so doesn’t that make it a positive and moral thing? So that argument about trust does not seem very strong.

Note: I am not here to debate the morality of eating or testing on animals. Most people believe it is morally acceptable to kill animals for food, although it is unnecessary. Most people also believe bestiality is immoral. What I attempted to do here was to show that those two views are inconsistent with each other.

Relevant info about me: Atheist, vegan. I do not find bestiality appealing; I have no desire to engage in it. 

If I recall correctly, when I read a catholic bible (which has some apocryphas) I did not found a constraint on father-daughter intercourse. There is a page completely dedicated to this, maybe it's at the end of old testament, I don't remember.
It's a little different from what is being discussed here, because it's not a more generic man-little girl intercourse, but it's related.

Well, Leviticus 18:6rules out all close relations.  Then the rest of the chapter is a list.  Is that what you had in mind?

Well yes but he was drunk into unconsciousness at the time.  If we are going to nail him on anything it would have to be offering his two virgin daughters for a potential gang rape.

If a potential sex partner is of the opposite sex and is very closely related, it is mainly justifiably considered wrong because of an increased risk of giving birth to a child with a defect from a recessive gene. So close relationship is a negative. It should not be relevant in homosexual sex.

Evolution has arguably given us an inhibition against sex with close relatives because it does not promote diversity, and genetic diversity is an advantage to a species that has not become maximally adapted to a stable environment, or has an opportunity to expand into new environments.

With other than close relatives, relationship is not really an issue as such. We are left with the basic default principle that sex, or any act with another, is wrong if it involves coercion to any degree, ie, the partner should be informed and willing. Extending this principle would pose problems in the case of sex with an animal. How can you be sure the animal is aware of and meaningfully willing to participate in the act?

There is also the "ick" factor.  (You haven't met my brother.)  (For that matter, I haven't met your sister.  May not be ick, but any hoo, moving along.....)

I agree - sex between consenting adults is never a problem for me.  If everyone is over the legal age of consent, is capable of understanding and responsibly dealing with any consequences, is physically and sexually mature, and they all consent, it is none of my business if they are/are not related or what sex everyone is/is not or how many join the party.

Note - this leaves out all bestiality since animals are incapable of legal consent.

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I am not even sure if it would be possible to define animal consent, at least in some cases. For example, the artificial breeding industry uses chemicals to force females into accepting the old turkey baster. Spray the stuff in their snout and they will go tail in the air immediately.

If some perv got access to that stuff, the animal on some level would be willing but artificially so.

Honestly, the free will argument has to die. You're idea of free will rests on a flawed dichotomous concept. One can argue for a deterministic reality and human consciousness but that person forgets one thing; that in order for determinism to have any meaning you have to actually produce a way to calculate/predict a conscious being's every move. I'm fairly confident that will never happen even in our deterministic universe. Do you know why? Because the orders of magnitude of computing power you'd need to simulate not just a human mind, but every interaction it has with the world around it and the human minds it interacts with as well and so on... You'd end up needing more energy to run the simulation then what the actual 'real' world contains.

You're concept of free-will vs determinism is essentially similar to The Dichotomy Paradox. You believe that determinism is like dissecting everything into halves of halves of halves etc... to the point of where conscious decisions are no longer a choice and movement is not possible all the while we're all walking right over those entire lengths. It doesn't necessarily prove the opposite (free will) is true either. Only your mode of thinking is outdated. You can roll on into semantics about what's choice in a deterministic world, but what's choice in a world where determinism is only approximately true and not provable on a scale of our consciousness?

The rest of your reasoning about things being contrary to nature is flawed as well. Can you even define what it means to be a human being? I'm sorry but you can't use faith and reason in the same sentence, one is the absence of the other. It's painfully obvious that it's the faith part that offends you and your definition of what's natural has a religious context, The barriers associated with homosexual bigotry are almost always along religious lines. It all boils down to a few lines of text you just can't let go of. As many have pointed out, there are MANY things that are "unnatural" that we utilize every day; an argument from what ought to be natural just doesn't work. Non-culpable actions only exist outside of societies, how is this not obvious?

wtf?!?!  youre not serious. are you serious?

.... is this guy serious?

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OK, I got curious and did some googling on the matter of incest avoidance in animals. Apparently the situation id actually fairly complicated.

Apparently, the rate of incest is greatest in isolated populations such as mountain tops or small islands. No big surprise there. I suppose that would account for some of the issues that are found in isolated groups of humans.

Also, at least in mammals, most species have some type of mechanism where one sex leaves the family group on maturity.

That considered as background, I did find several examples of animal incest where options exist and that can work out.

One example is that gorillas will mate with pretty much any available female, close relatives included. As it turns out, that can work for a species as long as there is out of group breeding going on. From what I gather, most of the inbred offspring that have serious genetic issues die before they can pass along those genes. So the individuals that do survive to breeding age are more likely to be genetically robust.

Now in humans, the avoidance mechanism seems to be dominated by a psychological factor. Apparently the “community” of adopted people are aware of several examples of siblings who never met as kids who ended up marrying as adults and some of them even have kids. I don't know how healthy those kids are but from what I see, it happens often enough to merit a wikipedia page on the matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_sexual_attraction

Then there is something called the Westermarck effect. Apparently, children who are raised together don't interbreed much at all even though there is no actual relationship. It has been studied in a few places. One of note is the communal living in Israel (kibbutz). The wikipedia link for that goes to a book that one would have to buy but apparently, being raised in the same social group is a large factor in sexual avoidance.

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OK, I made almost a minute into that video cj. But I don't really want to spend an hour looking at animals who are that sick.

Even so, in the cat market, there is a significant interest in deliberate outcrossing. To the point that it tells how the concept of a clade is more useful that that of a species.

If you cross a domestic cat with an Asian snow leopard, you will get lots of sterile males but the females can breed with other domestic cats. After four or so generations, you will get cats who are domestic enough for most people and they appear to be resistant to many of the diseases that are important to bred lines of domestic cats.

Actually, I had one of those for 18 years. Kitty damned near had superpowers. When I came home at the end of the day, he would run to my feet and leap to my shoulder in a single bound. That is not a trivial thing for regular cats.

There are other deliberate interspecies crosses as well. I don't know much about them, if for no better reason than the fact that I refuse to pay thousands of bucks for a kitty. However, they are, from what I gather, showing the results of genetic variability as far as their health is concerned.

Hey OPIE,

I laughed for 5 minutes straight when i read your post. It's hillarious. Um, atheism has no ethics. Since there is no means for the know then this is impossible. I mean, the amatuers on here say there is, but that's why they're called amatures. Professional college professors who are atheists admit this is impossible.

So no, as an atheist you can have sex with a monkey. And pray Our Father to monkeys. You can boink and elephant if you want. Or my would have been mother in law. haha

Look. You can do anything in atheism. You can kill your family and screw a monkey immediately afterwards. Atheistm is extremely evil.

So within atheism, since there are no means of logic and ethics, then you can jack off with Kangeroo jack. What will your kids look like? lol. probably like Sapient.

Oh Come on, that's a joke - kind of.

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).

You likely wouldn't know a college professor (atheist or otherwise) if he bit you.

You can do more in Christianity. Rape, kill, pillage - doesn't matter. AS long as you remember to ask forgiveness after it's OK. If you believe that God told you to rape, kill and pillage you can even skip that step.

If atheism is evil why are all atheists more moral than God?

lol, rofl this thread is hysterical. Really, comedy big time here.

You really have to tell me though how you did that? With a billion comments or whatever the number was.

Please tell me, it's kind of my birthday.

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).

[email protected]

How are animals not capable of consenting? They have sex all the time. Children cannot consent because they do not have sex under normal conditions. Animals do. The consent argument doesn't make sense when applied here.

I've seen movies were dogs seem to be very willing to participate.

Short answer no, it is not wrong, but BobSpence is right, willingness is difficult to ascertain.

           I believe sex between animals and humans is acceptable as long as both partners are in a committed relationship with each other.  But sex just for the sake of sex is just, well ....vulgar.