Bestiality/Zoophilia should be legal and is not inherently immoral

“Most if not all of of his opening is indeed argumentation, as opposed to establishing what is and is not permissible in this debate, thus I find all of his statements to be open game for counter-arguments.” I gave three premises that you should accept before debating, if you don’t I’m not going to say you’re not allowed to debate; but I do know that there is not enough room in four rounds to resolve whether the law and morality should reflect each other, whether the moral question here is consent and avoidance of harm, and whether morality even exists etc… If you think you can just focus on legality all you’re going to get from me is abstract political-ethics and people who come to vote will be wondering what to decide on. “Had PRO not wanted to debate over a rational basis for legality, he should have left legality out of the resolution.” I say there is only one rational basis for legality, morality. Everything else falls under a person’s right to liberty regardless of whether you think it is best for them. If you think you have another basis present it. “PRO concedes that informed consent is extremely important for the purposes of legality.” I do not, I said it’s used in legal circles. The law is consistently unconcerned with the informed consent of animals. Even if it was I would reject an argument based on legal precedent alone. That is an appeal to authority. “As one can see, informed consent does not involve perfect knowledge; it only involves enough knowledge to make an intelligent decision.” Lol, how objective (sarcastic). Now define an intelligent decision and give a categorical definition of which facts are relevant to that decision (note categorical means you don’t just give a few examples, but a general rule). “Animals cannot demonstrate informed consent. In order for animals to consent to interspecies sex, we must be able to inform the animal of the consequences of such an act” Incorrect, as I already explained in my OP consent and informed consent are not equal, therefore an animal’s inability to demonstrate informed consent does not mean they cannot consent. All the burdens you claim are mine based on this premise are void. “2) communicate consent to humans when humans initiate sexual advances to an animal.” Not all animals, just some. If you want an example consider a female dog. When she is consenting she will stand still or back up into the human instead of pursuing other activities. She will sometimes provide counter-strokes. She may also wag her tail. In short she will behave with a man exactly as she would behave with a male dog whom she as accepted. Unless you are willing to say that for all we know every instance of canine sex is rape, bitches have and will continue to consent to humans. Many more examples exist for dogs, horses, and other large domesticated mammals. Finally we need not worry we are mistaking the lack of consent for consent when the lack of consent from animals is frankly so unmistakable: Vocalization: http://www.youtube.com... Action/Body language/ Vocalization : http://www.youtube.com... (2:55) “One issue arising from slaugtering animals is that it is deemed necessary for our own survival,” This is false, at least at this point in time. Furthermore why would necessity make murder acceptable? A well-known moral dilemma is cannibalism in a survival situation, and your theory would excuse a person from murdering all their fellows for their meat. “By prohibiting bestiality, we reduce if not outright eliminate the possibility of this specific kind of behavior” I am happy you noticed that there were some similarities between having sex with a human and having sex with an animal. However this line of argument is absurd, the best you can hope to claim is that zoophiles are deluding themselves into thinking their animals consent; for the zoophiles most certainly believe the animals are consenting. In which case they do not think they are having sex with non-consenting beings and cannot therefore become accustomed to it. Furthermore I do not accept your justification for excepting slaughter houses and hunting, if humans are willing to kill animals they don’t know why not shoot humans they don’t know? You take for granted that a human can’t mentally separate their behavior towards animals and behavior towards humans which is clearly false. Finally even if there was a link, that still wouldn’t justify a law since laws apply to everyone not just the people who commit rape. When someone does that there are always a thousand contributing factors but that does not justify banning each one, they must in of themselves be immoral. For instance, watching soft porn may lead to watching hard porn, which may lead to watching violent porn, which may lead to rape. That doesn’t mean watching porn is immoral; which is to say it shouldn’t be illegal. “This is simply incorrect. A stranger in a hospital is known to have given "implied consent", which is a form of consent:” I withdraw the last sentence and will alter this section of my argument in the future. You are right it is implied consent and I have always understood that. It should read “there is no explicit consent and therefore no informed consent” “In order for PRO to affirm the resolution, he must demonstrate why we should assume such implied consent for animals in regards to sex” No universal assumption is necessary, the individual animals imply consent by their actions, vocalizations, and body language. “This is again just simply incorrect. If a creature is incapable of making a choice, then it is incapable of giving consent. Consent is still fully conceptually applicable in this situation” Then it is fully applicable for a tree as well. “PRO must demonstrate that these hypotheticals are fully applicable to reality in order for PRO to affirm the resolution.” Do you want a picture? A video? Or a link to an author that claims to have witnessed it? Or will you claim that no matter what negative conditioning was used? In that case cannot prove it to you nor could anything be proved to you since this is a debate forum and not a controlled lab setting. At a certain point you and the readers must do some fact checking yourselves, especially given the context of this issue and the rules about posted material. Even if you leave it at that hypothetical I will be content to know all that remains is one objective study. "At a conference on great apes a few years ago, I spoke to a woman who had visited Camp Leakey, a rehabilitation center for captured orangutans in Borneo run by Birute Galdikas, sometimes referred to as "the Jane Goodall of orangutans" and the world's foremost authority on these great apes. At Camp Leakey, the orangutans are gradually acclimatised to the jungle, and as they get closer to complete independence, they are able to come and go as they please. While walking through the camp with Galdikas, my informant was suddenly seized by a large male orangutan, his intentions made obvious by his erect penis. Fighting off so powerful an animal was not an option, but Galdikas called to her companion not to be concerned, because the orangutan would not harm her, and adding, as further reassurance, that "they have a very small penis." As it happened, the orangutan lost interest before penetration took place, but the aspect of the story that struck me most forcefully was that in the eyes of someone who has lived much of her life with orangutans, to be seen by one of them as an object of sexual interest is not a cause for shock or horror. The potential violence of the orangutan's come-on may have been disturbing, but the fact that it was an orangutan making the advances was not. That may be because Galdikas understands very well that we are animals, indeed more specifically, we are great apes. This does not make sex across the species barrier normal, or natural, whatever those much-misused words may mean, but it does imply that it ceases to be an offence to our status and dignity as human beings."http://www.utilitarianism.net...http://www.youtube.com... Looks at these dogs behavior, do you seriously believe that if the human cooperated they wouldn't complete the act? “Also, PRO must demonstrate that these hypotheticals are applicable to ALL cases of bestiality. The resolution is clear that there are no exceptions to be made, that ALL "Bestiality/zoophilia should be legal...” Also incorrect, the resolution states bestiality is not immoral and shouldn’t be illegal. It was scopeless and in context that means the act in of itself not including modifiers or corollary acts which are immoral. If I said “sex should be legal and is not inherently immoral” would I have to prove that rape is moral? If I said it is not inherently dangerous would I have to prove that HIV doesn’t exist? “Again, this goes back to habit. Humans generally do not ride on the backs of other humans, and in the cases in which they do, it is typically playful and not considered harmful.” And if we were to accept your premise above that humans will get confused if they do something with an animal and end up doing it to a human, then it only follows that horse riding should cause many incidents of people trying to ride other people around. You also did not answer the question.