Bestiality should be illegal

COUNTER CONTENTION 1: If humans have undue influence over animals the solution is to reduce their influence, bestiality has nothing to do with that. 1.1 Pro begins his support of this contention by noting all the ways humans use animals for our benefit to show how they don’t rebel and seem generally obedient. I believe he meant to show that animals will not rebel even when something makes them unhappy, but he has also made my point for me. If we use animals in so many ways and they don’t rebel, how do we know we aren’t hurting them or contradicting their happiness just as severely as we would with sex (presuming sex regularly does that at all)? Pro states that a dog will go to his cage even if it makes him unhappy, yet if we had a means of determining what makes dogs happy or unhappy could we not simply apply that knowledge for every interaction? Pro’s argument here seems to boil down to, “everything else we do with animals is already bad enough, so let’s just pick something and ban it… hey why not bestiality?” 1.2 Pro describes the purpose behind statutory rape laws, but again proceeds to undermine his point by admitting society is making a false assumption in presuming younger people cannot consent despite being capable of saying “yes” or “no”. Actually it would in the context that the child used the exact same technique to have sex with another child. Pro then rejects all evidence based on objective analysis of animal behavior by rejecting the relevance of any video. This especially reinforces that this contention is completely disconnected from what animals want or why they want it. It is entirely focused on an appeal to what is admittedly legal fiction to support some greater good. So I ask (and I have been wanting to do this for some time so thank you for the chance) Good?-by what standard? If the truth does not give you the result you want, if you think the good is incompatible with the facts what gives you the right to bind others to your fiction? What makes your good any more than your delusion? The reasoning Pro asks you to extend is not reasoning at all but your classic “end justify the means” applied to belief. We don’t want old people to have sex with young people so we are going to pretend they don’t consent, we don’t want humans to have sex with animals so we are going to pretend animals can’t consent, we don’t want homosexuals to have sex with their own gender so we are going to pretend they’re crazy (and thus can’t consent). I reject, and any rational person would reject this house of cards which is held up only by an appeal to consequence fallacy. http://www.nizkor.org... . Pro’s inability to find a better reason than lack of consent to condemn pedophilia does not support his position or change the facts. COUNTER CONTENTION 2: Bestiality is not dangerous to human society any more than intraspecies sex is, any more than consuming animal products is, in anyway more than keeping pets is. 2.1 Pro brings up the HIV virus as an example of one of the deadliest diseases known to man. He links to a Q&A website which establishes that HIV came from chimpanzees. What he failed to mention was that the answer cited eating chimpanzee meat as the likely infection vector. Pro’s point appears to be targeted more towards meat eating than bestiality. I would also like to quote from another one of Pro’s sources (8) https://en.wikipedia.org... : “It [HIV] only lives in primates (humans, apes and monkeys) and is not believed to survive long in other species or away from the human body and fluids.” Primates are far from the typical animal partner for zoosexual contact. Therefore if a human has sexual contact with a relevant animal and transfers specimens of HIV to them, and another human then has sexual contact with that same animal a couple days later the new human will not contract HIV nor will any other human who has sex with that animal in the future. If the ‘middle man’ was another human the final result would be three people infected by HIV. In the case where bestiality is mixed in with human sex only the original person is infected, the animal and the other human are fine. If any kind of wide spread bestiality took the place of sex with prostitutes or random hook ups, that would significantly slow the spread of HIV and other STDs relevant animals don’t carry. If no such wide spread bestiality would occur then there would be little effect from bestiality in any case since isolated sexual relationships pose no danger to the public. 2.2 Furthermore even if HIV was transmitted via sex, saying this event would justify banning all bestiality for all time is just as fallacious as claiming because one mold gave us penicillin growing any mold in any quantity should be legal for all time. It is not possible to live on this planet without exposing yourself to possible contagions and probably never will be. If we were to ban every such act we may as well pull the trigger on all the nukes right now you’re all guilty. The only fair question to ask about bestiality is whether it is biologically, particularly dangerous and the clear and resounding answer is NO. There are not more zoonoses than normal diseases, they are not on average more dangerous than normal diseases, there aren’t even any that are transmitted only by sex (from the wiki look for any example lacking M, F, and B). The enemy here are dangerous diseases and they are created at random. All else equal it is less likely that a disease evolving in an animal host will be able to survive in our bodies than the same in another human (or close relative such as chimps). This contention is similar in quality to the argument against homosexuality that commits the same fallacy. Confusing vectors of infection with the creation of the contagion. Homosexual sex between uninfected people will never result in HIV. Neither will zoosexual sex between uninfected people. 2.3 Pro makes the claim that human bodies aren’t built to accommodate other species activities and fluids. This is true, and it’s why the actual number of species humans can really have sex with is quite small in comparison to all the species that exist. However those species which do live with us are not selected at random, they are quite close to us on the evolutionary tree (all things considered). They use many of the same hormones, compounds, etc.. Even with species known to be compatible some individuals have problems. What Pro again failed to mention is that there is a word for this, it’s an allergy. Allergies are not contagious, they cannot pose a risk to ‘human society’. 2.4 As per my arguments in 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 there is no extra burden from bestiality placed on society and what little potential for burden there is does not constitute an extra danger to society. By extra I mean more than allowing free sex between humans, allowing the consumption of animal products, and allowing unsupervised human-animal contact in general. 2.5 Pro refers to zoophiles/zoosexuals as a few malcontents. How many malcontents does it take before society must give them equal rights? 2.6 We do not need to guess at what a society with legal bestiality would look like, there are already a few countries where it is legal. Denmark for instance. Yet the explosion of terrifying diseases has not occurred, clearly they are trying to lull us into a false sense of security. CONCLUSION: Pro is simply completely wrong about the health risks of bestiality. Pro says I am proposing a society where animals are effectively sex slaves. Well in order for an animal to be a sex slave, first it needs to be a slave. Therefore Pro is proposing that a society where animals are effectively (food, experiment, house, labor) slaves is acceptable but a society where they are sex slaves isn’t. I cannot see any reason for this to be the case other than a special emotional fear of anything sexual.