Bestiality should be illegal

May the best arguments win.They always do.Unless corrected by my opponent I assume that "should be" involves ethical, moral and legal concerns, among others.Would you look at that, someone who reads ‘should’ and immediately thinks of ethics? There is hope yet!Your rights are only limited in that you should not violate the rights of others.Rights as you stated them are also limited by reality. Does a man violate another’s right to safety by failing to protect him? If so how can that man have a right to liberty?my argument states that bestiality is comparable to rape, and as such an abuse of such magnitude that it should be illegal.Nice and clear, but I do have a few questions. Are you saying the law should ignore these rights in other cases? If not would you advocate that the more serious abuses are addressed before the less serious? Do you really think all animals deserve the same rights and if so why?I think we can all agree (hopefully!) that rape is nonconsensual sex. To answer this question, the central issue is whether all, some or no bestiality is nonconsensual.Some or none are irrelevant, if non-consent is an unnecessary quality of the act the law must (ethically) draw the line at non-consent not the act. This is no different from human sex where only some is consensual / nonconsensual.I would note that just because the sex is nonconsensual does not ... at the time, mentally capable of consent. The justice system is confused. It is blatant contradiction to say a mind is capable of consenting and then give a list of things it cannot consent to. It reminds me of Ford’s famous statement about the choice of color on the model T, pretending someone did not consent is no better than pretending they did. The idea here is informed consent, and the reason it’s causing this contradiction is the fact it is confusing and conflating three separate problems.1. Doing something against another’s explicit or implicit consent violates their liberty, their right to make their own decisions.2. Failing to communicate what can reasonably be expected to be relevant information about an interaction to another party capable of receiving that information, especially because that information would cause the other party to decide against one’s own goal is dishonest. This is fraud in its most general form.3. Engaging in an interaction that is known to have a significant risk of negative consequences with someone who does not understand and consent to the risk is immoral unless the interaction is necessary to avoid an even greater risk to the person.These are in fact three separate requirements, and the law should reflect that instead of trying to bind them up into one legal structure. Honestly communicating all relevant details possible can satisfy #2. Understanding and consenting to significant risks is a way to satisfy #3.However the mere fact that the law has to say “that’s not good enough” to some consent is proof they are separate from consent. In reality only for rule #1 is the consent of the other person an issue. For rules #2 and #3 it is YOU who should not consent if you cannot satisfy them.Thus we must face the truth, children can consent to sex; and so can drunkards. Their consent is not the problem in these cases. It is the significant risk of negative consequences which cannot be nullified that is the problem. It is the fact that they can’t absolve you of responsibility that is the issue.Never the less it remains from this analysis that there must exist a significant risk, a possibility of information that has been withheld in order for immorality to exist.For pedophilia it’s #3. There is a significant risk of shame and self-esteem issues (psychological harm) when and if the person comes to believe they were violated. For drunk or drugged people the risk is similar for when they regain their awareness (unless the person’s attitude is extremely well known to be OK with it).For people who have sex without telling their partner they have STDs the problem is #2.If you drag a drunkard out of a bar and put them in bed after they have passed out, that is no less done without their informed consent than having sex with them. This is moral, it passes #3 because there were no significant risks.If you buy an apple without being told that the Peruvian condor is a magnificent glider you have not been cheated because that information is irrelevant to the interaction.If you are brought unconscious into a hospital they can still save your life without informing you of the risks because you weren’t capable of receiving that information. Observe that if you were awake, lucid, and talking they would be legally and morally required to pose the question to you first.I have the burden of proof to establish that bestiality is comparable to rape, except between species.Anything is comparable to anything else so long as they have any common qualities. You probably mean to say bestiality is rape.Also bestiality is by definition between species, I will assume that’s a typo.My argument is that, like a drunken person or a human child, the non-human animal's mental capacities are not comparable to the human's mental capacities to the extent that the animal is capable of consenting to sex with that human.Can you please define the minimum mental capacity and explain why it only applies to sex and only with humans?This territory is a little blurry because we aren't actually technologically at the point where we can determine whether animals feel or to what extent their thinking patterns are comparable to ours.I think it’s fairly obvious and has been since the dawn of time that animals have emotions. As for proving it that’s going to be a bit of a problem especially since nobody has bother to objectively define emotions relative to behavior or neural activity.You may be interested in reading this article (yes I know I hate these news ‘recap’ articles about scientific studies but I am not providing this as some kind of proof just an interesting related read)http://www.dailymail.co.uk...I would argue: rather safe than sorry!I would argue rather true than paranoid, if you have no reason to believe something is abusive that’s the best you’re ever going to get since there is no evidence for the non-existent in the universe. Maybe saying you don’t believe in fairies kills them, and if they exist that’s abusive. How do you know they don’t?When your boss, parent or teacher makes sexual advances, there is always a coercive element: resistance will have negative repercussions on your subsistence and health, even if the act itself is not physically damaging.That is not true, the other’s ability to negatively affect your life as ‘punishment’ for refusing to consent is not equal to them actually doing so. For instance a male and female on a desert island, all else being equal the man could beat the woman to death 9/10. Coercion does not occur unless he actually threatens to do so.For animals especially given their limited intelligence it is wholly unreasonable to expect them to fear retribution where none has ever been imposed, to fear starvation when withholding food has never been a response to their behavior, etc..Pick up any pet training manual and you will find the same thing, if you want them to understand a connection between their behavior and your treatment of them you need to respond quickly; they will not easily associate your behavior now with their behavior two hours ago. Such a mindset will certainly not associate your hypothetical behavior.Pets rely entirely on their human owners to care for them. In the case of owner and pet, bestiality is rape because the animal is unable to survive without their caretaker, and thus the caretaker is all-powerful, and resistance is both futile and destructive, and thus not a legitimate choice. The sexual encounter is, to some extent, forced. All of the critical elements of that statement are false.1. Pets do not rely entirely on their owners to care for them, most could survive on the streets or in the fields for extended periods of time, and even if they couldn’t they may very well think they could (hence the runaway problem). If they stay with humans it’s because they are social animals and their instincts across the board mean they will only feel secure and happy within a group.2. The inability to survive without your partner is not the hallmark of rape non-consent is. Otherwise a husband and wife would be obliged to stop having sex if one of them ever became disabled (in most societies in history).3. Resistance is not both futile and destructive unless you’ve got a nutjob caretaker. Zoosexuals go out of their way to make sure an animal knows he/she can say no to sex.4. The sexual encounter is not forced to any extent without force or threat of force being involved.Now to the question whether animals are mentally capable of consenting to sex with humans.First another question. We know latex and other building materials are incapable of consenting to anything no brain, not even basic control systems.So is sex with an inflatable sex toy rape? Why not?A sober, adult, healthy, sane human can decide whether or not to have sex with another adult human; an animal cannot neurologically reach a comparable level of consent and understanding.You start off with describing circumspection, analysis of consequences, anxieties and decision-making and then say an animal cannot reach a ‘comparable’ (read as similar) level of consent.That does not follow, based on your three paragraphs of discourse and final summation your conclusion would be that animals cannot reach a similar level of circumspection, analysis of consequences, anxieties and decision-making. Consent is thrown in at the end without any connecting logic.