Zoophilia/Bestiality should be legal and is not inherently immoral

Like I said in my second argument, I'm going to switch back to debating about the morality of zoophilia. "In my first argument, I said that the morals laws of a country were dictated by its populace, and even though you disagreed with me at first, you seem to have agreed with me, as per this." I see now how that is ambiguous, let me be clearer. There is a staggering diversity in moral beliefs as there are in many fields of human thought. A person should of course hold to what they believe to be moral, but that does not mean everyone holds the correct morals. I believe in an objective morality which follows from objective values and leads to objective laws. A nation's laws are dictated by the morality of its people (in the case of democracy) this is a statement of fact. What the people should believe is not necessarily what they do believe. They should believe what is correct, but may not. Regardless of whether they believe in correct morals or fallacious ones the laws of their nation will follow from their morals. That is why I do not believe legal and moral issues can ever be completely separate, I look upon attempts to do so as misguided to say the least. I am not saying that if something is legal it is moral, nor am I saying that if it is moral it is legal. I believe I was most clear in my opening post when I said "if something is moral it should be legal and if is legal it should be moral." Should does not equal is. You might say that believing in some kind of absolute or objective morality is a natural response to believing things that the large majority do not. I can assure you that is not the case. Many of my fellow zoophiles have floated to the opposite and in my opinion irrational extreme. They insist morality is a delusion invented by religion, and no one can really say what is true or not so they had best just mind their own business. I know that is not a premise any human civilization could survive the application of, I know it is false; but it does make more sense than the middle position which attempts to compromise. The middle says "There is truth, and morality, but the only way to find it is by trusting the authority of either the mob or some wise sage leaders". If there is a truth it is accessible by reason, if it is not accessible by reason refuse to recognize it as truth. Therefore don't recognize more than one correct morality, I don't think two moralities can be compatible with each other unless one is a subset of the other. "You said that the morality of a group dictated its laws, and that the law should be based only on morality." But not that morality should be based on the moral beliefs of any person or any group of people. Such is just mindless trust in an authority. "Let's take the Christian morality as an example, since it is the majority religion across North America (I'm assuming you live there.) The Bible says that a man may not lie with an animal, so according to the morality of the group, bestiality is immoral." The bible is wrong, I hope you know enough to know that trying to use it as a serious authority in a debate is just kind of silly. I understand you just brought this point up because you think I implied something I didn't mean to. However, even so I will entertain you with an observation of mine. This is not supposed to be an argument that the bible permits bestiality, such a conclusion would require that the bible was internally consistent. 18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” 19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam[f] no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs[g] and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib[h] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” 24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. http://www.biblegateway.com... Now what is a suitable helper? It doesn't really say but it implies it, woman took the role; so a woman's relation to a man is the relation of the suitable helper. That is to say a social and sexual relationship, oh yea and all that love and soul mating stuff. Now also remember that God is all knowing, he would know who and what a suitable helper would be. If God knew that only a woman would be a suitable helper it would follow that he would create a woman at the same time he created man. Instead it says that he brought forth 'all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky' before the man so that he might name them. Immediately afterward it says 'But for Adamno suitable helper was found.' implying that the process of bringing every animal before him was to check for suitability. Since the unsuitability was only discovered after Adam had seen all the animals, and God is all knowing and would not need to wait till then, the only logical conclusion is that God did not think the animals were unsuitable, instead it was Adam who found none acceptable. If then the decision to consider animals unsuitable originated from a man can we not reverse this decision? Especially since Adam screwed some other things up if I recall. If some reader is going "ah but ADOL how come it says man shall not lay with a beast later", because it's not consistent. I've seen some tragic homosexuals try to sneak past the later condemnations with stuff a lot thinner and there are already many Christians willing to flat out ignore the stuff that calls it an abomination. "Another argument for zoophilia could be that animals enjoy sex, and so do humans, therefore it's OK. (I'm not saying that you said that, BTW.)" I would never claim that such is an argument (some humans and animals both enjoy killing, doesn't mean they would enjoy doing it to each other at the same time), but I do believe many animals enjoy sex and can enjoy it with humans. "It has been proven that only a tiny fraction of animals have sex for reasons other than reproduction (as in pleasure)" Well I got to be careful here, the animal kingdom is very wide. By species count you'd think insects were the majority of animals. If you're saying it's been proven that only a tiny fraction of large mammals enjoy sex I would challenge that. I've seen videos of bears masturbating and giraffes trying to mate with donkeys. It takes a special kind of bias to think such behavior is best explained by instinct to reproduce. Humans did not spring from the void, consider this. A brain that is capable of learning is useless if it is shackled by instincts which the consciousness cannot overcome. This is true to of higher mammals who like us have made a distinct advantage of intelligence and learning. How then do you bring about sex without undermining your adaptive behavior control (i.e. volitional mind)? Simple you motivate the consciousness to take actions but leave it free to choose another course based on experience. That motivation is pleasure. That is why we don't feel an uncontrollable urge to mate, we feel sexual attraction and pleasure when we close the deal. It only makes sense that those animals who share the traits that led to attraction and pleasure share the attraction and pleasure to some degree. "so subjecting an animal that only has sex for reproduction to sex for pleasure seems wrong to me." Even if an animal does not experience pleasure, that does not mean it won't consent. If it comes down to it you can just bribe the animal. Furthermore I know this appears to be off premise, but I don't think consent is a requirement for all animals, some of them are as far below a dog as a dog is below us (if not farther). Crocodiles and fish and such, they act like computers more than volitional beings so I say treat them that way. Zoophiles absolutely respecting the consent of their partners (pretty much all higher mammals) is already far more conservative about animal rights than human society is. By the time we eliminated all the double standards and society was as concerned about animal consent in general as zoophiles are in regards to sex: leashes would be illegal and eating meat would be banned. That's not going to happen because even though no animals consent to being eaten they taste good, and what is that but pleasure at the expense of an animals life? If I were an animal, I should prefer sex, uninteresting or otherwise.