Bestiality/Zoophilia should be legal and is not inherently immoral

4. “I will not be bullied out of the debate, and I hope that is not my opponent's intention.” The intention is to prevent a ‘debate’ which consists of nothing more than discovering just how deep into the fields of ethics or politics someone might disagree with me before we run out of rounds. I consider the size and specificity of my framework to be the result of the formatting requirements of this site. It in no way reflects my unwillingness to debate the full range of objections to my argument as is clearly implied by the repeated statements of ‘we can have another debate on that’. “B1 is slightly problematic. My opponent is advocating that bestiality should be legal. I'm simply proposing that it should not be legal. My opponent certainly has the right to define the criterion of the round to be morality, but (s)he cannot make my arguments for me. I reserve the right to attack the legality of bestiality/zoophilia in any way that I choose that is consistent with the case.” Then as I told those who have made the same objection before you, this will turn into a debate about the proper relation between law and morality. Leaving the honest voter with a bit of a conundrum since they are supposed to vote on the contents of the debate instead of their own independent opinions about premises. “If not--if you don't have any laws that you think are prohibitive of bestiality/zoophilia, then I've already won. The burden is not mine to come up with a law, but yours.” Why couldn’t I make this argument in a world where there are no laws against bestiality? Is a resolution “breathing should be legal and is not inherently immoral” impossible since there are no laws against breathing? I fail to see how any specific law passed by any given state or nation is required to debate this topic nor how picking one is necessary to my BoP. “b. Keep in mind also that definitions display how people use words, not actual meanings. For example, your definition of rape seems to explicitly NOT include nonhuman animals” It doesn’t include all non-human animals that’s true, but I believe it includes the relevant ones (dogs, horses, sheep, goats, dolphins, the other great apes, higher social mammals in general). I have gotten into debates about whether these animals are capable of intelligent self-determination but that’s really not necessary to establish. At some point you’ve got to cross a line and realize that caring about consent is an anthropomorphic projection because there is no decision to respect. If you care about the consent of a tree you are caring about a decision that never has and never will take place. You are trying to respect a phantom of your own perception. There is only the decision you would make if you had the body of a tree, which is not the same as a tree making a decision… you could say the same of a rock. “c. Additionally, your biological pain does not consider humiliation or psychological trauma, both of which are problematic.” I would consider those painful. There are two definitions, one for pain (mental harm) and biological damage (physical harm). You are right I should probably make that part a bit clearer, but I only had 34 characters left… I would like to give my opinion on psychological trauma to the relevant animals. They most certainly can be psychologically harmed, however this is one of those cases where the more complex a machine is the easier it is to break. I think humans are the most psychologically vulnerable species because there is so many ways we can feel humiliation or take offense. Animals are not entangled in our thousands of years of cultural background. If you want to psychologically harm one you are going to have to do something that they perceive as an insult… and for relevant animals that means hurting them or damaging the social bonds they rely on. Those social bonds being essentially bonds of trust which they have with humans as well as other animals… damaged by [again] hurting them or repeatedly disregarding their will in a profound way. So really the possibility of psychological harm just comes right back to the original moral criteria. “E.1) [You forgot a burden] To demonstrate that non-human animals can consent to sex” I said ‘My burden of proof is to show that it is possible that an animal can consent to sex with a human.’ “2) [You forgot a burden] that having a law prohibiting bestiality/zoophilia would be worse than no law” Premise B.1 implies that a law prohibiting moral behavior is always worse than no such law. If the BoP was to prove every premise one used in an argument every argument would have about a hundred thousand pages of overhead and wouldn’t prove axioms to boot. “My opponent thinks (s)he can give 5,000 characters of requirement for this debate, and that I have to accept them all. Ha.” I believe categorizing the framing as an attempt to force you to only use some arguments is naïve. If you think there is any other way to come to non-trivial conclusions besides relying on premises that others may or may not accept, that tells me you have not seen how involved or lengthy debates can really be. Since you do not feel obliged to remain within the framing I think we will get to see firsthand what happens. “F: However, I must insist that definitions of consent according to the law are VITAL. You are not obligated to follow the past law's way of informed consent, but you must be able to set up standards for informed consent in the eyes of the law, or else I've already won that animals would never be protected. I look forward to seeing my opponent's analysis on this.” If you agree that I do not need to follow past laws then I can simply say that laws to prevent animal rape should have standards of information designed for their level of cognition. That is the information they need to have is what they would learn in nature by experience. They need to know what they are doing however they perceive it. That pretty much only excludes having sex with an unconscious or restrained animal. The law should not recognize animal consent as releasing liability for things they cannot understand. “a. I hereby concede that bestiality/zoophilia is NOT inherently immoral. b. However, please realize that I still hold that bestiality/zoophilia is immoral in the context of the real world.” Which world do you think I was talking about? “c. Even if that's not the case, that does not necessarily mean that it is moral. Wearing a red shirt is not moral or immoral.” I would say it’s moral since it’s not immoral. “----That is to say, if one lucky human manages to have sex with a consenting animal, that does not really mean anything.” It means it’s possible to have sex with a consenting animal. “----Non human animals, I will argue, will still need protection in the form of laws against bestiality/zoophilia.” If they don’t need protection from bestiality then they don’t needs laws against bestiality. I look forward to your argument that they need to be protected from bestiality. “----You coming up with a hypothetical example of consent does not entail practical, legal consent.” Nothing is going to imply legal consent because legal consent as defined by all existing law can only come from adult humans with a certain but arbitrary level of understanding. Is there is anything about what you call a hypothetical and I call the general criteria that you believe is impossible in the real world? “1. My opponent must prove that having a general law is more harmful” My standard of proper law, as given in round 1 as a premise does not attempt to weigh the ‘harm’ of laws indeed I claim that no just law can possibly harm anyone or anything. If I had to cast it in terms of harm: A general law against bestiality violates rights since some bestiality is within the rights of humans and non-humans. That is harm. This will be called outcome (A). A lack of such a law can by definition be neither harmful nor beneficial. This will be called outcome (B). Where harm is a positive magnitude and benefit is a negative magnitude, and (A) is some non-zero harm, and (B) = 0; the following must be true: (B) < (A) “4. But either way, my opponent offered the criterion/burden of "harm," which I gladly accept, since this includes all harms, including pain, biological damage, humiliation, slavery, etc.” It was necessary harm. If the harm is not necessary then neither should illegality be. “5. Because we are talking about laws now, the criterion should be whether they are harmful, which my opponent admits. If not, it should be whether or not they are moral. Moral includes harms, pain, and mutual consent (my opponent's definition would allow certain instances of rape to be moral, so I rejected it).” Your opponent believes morality not ‘harm’ should dictate law as was clear from B.1. A rock does no harm by sitting on the ground but neither does it prevent any injustice either. If simply being non-harmful was the basis of law the best law would always be no law. My opponent has setup a dichotomy for me. There is the ideal world where my logic works, and the real world where it apparently doesn’t. Presumably in the ideal world nobody goes to prison on account of performing a moral sexual act (causes no harm, violates no consent) but in the real world some people must. I challenge my opponent to demonstrate this ‘need’ that I have overlooked in the real world. Also important I have already made an argument that animals can consent which details how they would communicate that consent. I have not forgotten that little bit.