As Long as we Continue to Eat Meat, Beastiality should be Legalized!

At no point in the opening round was it ever stated that the resolution of the debate was: Slaughtering animals for food is more unethical than bestiality. I had only the title to go by in figuring out what the resolution was. I was also under the impression that we were arguing about eating animals, not slaughtering them. The resolution of this debates seems to be changing based on what is most convenient for my opponent. I am going to cut my opponent some slack by ignoring the fact that the title (which I took to be the resolution) is a logically incoherent statement. However, I will not allow such gymnastics as changing in the third round whether we are debating the eating or animals or the killing of animals in slaughterhouse conditions as these are very different things. My stance remains that I do not approve of the means by which animals are often slaughtered but I do not disprove of the killing and eating of animals in and of itself. Now, moving on. Thanks to my opponent for providing this information about the behavior of animals in the wild. I do not consider it relevant to this debate. If it is okay to rape animals because they rape each other in the wild, would it not be okay to kill and eat animals because they do this in the wild as well? Certain the way animals behave toward one another cannot be considered a logical basis to determine who humans should behave towards animals. The behavior of non-sentient animals should have no effect on the way humans treat them any more than the behavior of non-sentient rocks should have an effect on how humans treat rocks. Humans, by virtue of the fact that they are sentient, can be expected to uphold a different moral standard than non-sentient beings or objects. Now, it appears my use of the word sentience has been called in question. Because Marriam-Webster seems to have offered a general definition that is not functionally useful for this debate, so I will elucidate as follows: By a sentience creature, I mean: a conscious, self-aware, autonomously acting individual with the capacity for moral judgment, abstract reasoning, and the ability to communicate these concepts through a syntactical language. That is what I mean by sentient for the purpose of this debate and until a word is created with that exact definition, I will continue to use the word "sentient" to express that meaning. I apologize for not defining the term better earlier. In this case, it is extremely clear that my definition would refer only to humans and not to other animals. Now, I will move on the clear up the apparent confusion about the distinction between valuing life and valuing suffering. When a person dies, it results in the termination of a sentience consciousness, and by virtue of the fact that I am a sentient consciousness I deem to existence of sentience consciousnesses to be favorable. I believe that in general bu supporting conditions that are favorable to my own existence, I support my own existence (barring an exception in which the costs outweigh the benefits). By this form of moral reasoning I believe that it is generally wrong to kill a person. By the same reasoning I believe it is wrong to cause pain to an entity capable of experiencing pain. An animal is an entity capable of experiencing pain but not a sentient consciousness. Therefore, I believe it i unfavorable to cause animals pain but not unfavorable to kill them. I also believe that a sentient consciousness has an innate value in that it can produce knowledge and new ideas and should therefore be preserved, whereas animals lack this ability. It is perfectly logical and consistent to support the killing of animals but not the torture of animals with supporting neither the killing or torture of people. There are traits that animals and people have which differ between them that support this conclusion. Now, I will remind everyone that I am under no obligation to prove that the present conditions under which animals are slaughtered are ethical. I believe they are not. I will repeat again that I am arguing for the EATING of animals and I have defend the killing of animals by some means. It is certainly possible to kill animals painlessly by lethal injection and since this is an ethical debate, the pragmatics of doing this on a large scale does not matter. The topics in this debate are ethical and therefore matters of principle. What is right and wrong does not conform to practicality. In order to make the distinction between human children and animals, by opponent appeals to that fact that animals live by different standards than humans. I agree. And I believe that humans should behavior according to human standards, standards which suggest having sex with a non-consenting individual is immoral. The fact that animals may engage in bestiality in the wild on has bearing on how humans should act toward animals because humans live according to different standards than animals. And I will repeat for evidence: even if this analogy were true it would justify the killing and eating of animals since animals do this to each other all the time. How is having sex with a non-consenting individual immoral? Well, I never thought I would have to explain the ethics of why rape is wrong up here goes anyway. Having sex with a non-consenting individual involves preforming a physical act on that individual against that individuals will. A physical act preformed on an individual against that individual's will is considered an act of violence. This violates the nonaggression principle, which states that one does not initiate an act of violence except in response to an act of violence or an anticipated act of violence, and the violence used must be to prevent further violence from being carried out. The nonaggression principle is typically held as an axiom of libertarian political philosophies, and though rejection of this axiom is possible it usually conflicts with too many other logic-based ethical theories (including the ones I have outlined above which oppose the killing and torturing of human beings). Killing of animals by seem to violate the non-aggression principle, but this is hardly so. I content that the nonaggression principle applies differently to animals than it does to humans. Simply, animals are protected from acts which cause pain unto them but not acts which kill them but virtue of the fact that their rights differ in this regard. As the nonaggression principle was meant to be applied only to humans, this exception sees correct. My opponent's last paragraph is not related to any of my arguments. I never said bestiality was unethical because it is abnormal. This is not at all analogous to homosexuality, of course. Homosexuals have sex with consenting individuals, not with non-sentient beings incapable of even understanding the concept of consent. My opponent's argument tends to appeal to connotations and our assumptions about what is correct based on our interpretations of reality. I prefer to start from ethical abstractions and move toward more concrete possibilities. There direction of reasoning which I have preferred to espouse allows us to weigh objective values and assess their relationships more clearly before moving on to interpret the concrete based on the ramifications of our conclusions. I use ethics as my lens through which to view reality and therefore must build my ethical position from the ground up. My definitions and conclusions are logically consistent by themselves and when applied to reality suggest the conclusion that I have proposed, which is that: 1. The killing of humans is unethical. 2. The torture of humans is unethical. 3. The killing of animals is ethical. 4. The torture of animals is unethical. 5. The rape of humans is unethical. 6. The rape of animals is unethical. And with that I am all out of characters.