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

Now I'm getting really confused? Was about supposed to be arguing about society's perspective, the eating of animals, the killing of animals in general, or the killing of animals under specific conditions? The way I see it, I already chose to ignore the fact that my opponent had no explicit resolution and I agreed to overlook the fact that the title (which I took to be the resolution in the absence of one) was a logical disaster. In any case, none of this gets in the way of my position, which I have clearly outlined and argued, and is clearly in disagreement with my opponents. Seeing as this debate did not have a clear resolution, I think that the conflict between my position and my opponent's is adequate. I have not ignored the underlying moral principles of the debate, in fact I have focused on them and covered them extensively. I maintain my position that the way animals interact with each other in the wild is not the basis on which humans should treat animals. The facts about animal sexual behavior provided by my opponent are not adequate to prove it is necessarily ethical to have sex with animals, they are just descriptive statements about how animals behavior. Humans, as I have said, can be expected to conform to a higher standard that is not based on animal behavior at all. Now, to address the concerns over my definition of sentient. It is quite true that I "concocted" that definition. I "concocted" it because it seems that the English languages lacks a word that means, " 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." How inconvenient for me. So, I commandeered an already existing word that I deemed a similar enough approximation and explained what I meant by it's usage. Again, I apologize for doing so a round late. The exact definition of words as provided by dictionaries is no restraint on our use of language if we are clear on what we mean, which I took care to be certain of. There was a very clear distinction I was trying to make by that definition that my opponent is trying to gloss over with a needless semantical argument. I have not said that humans set the moral standards for all species. Non-human animals lack the capacity for moral judgement and therefore are not held to any more standards. Humans, on the other hand, have certain moral standards they can be expected to conform to. I have provided several moral standards I expect humans should conform to and my reasons as to why. These clearly suggest that humans could painlessly kill animals for food but should not kill each other, and should rape neither animals nor each other. As far as animal breeding is concerned, I do not approve of it in higher animals if it is involuntary. I suspect for the most part animals are fairly complacent when it comes to mating with one another, but I am not expert. I would expect this practice should be carefully monitored. However, I am not an apologist for the meatpacking industry, animal breeders, or society in general. My platform in this debate is to defend my position that the eating of animals is ethical with bestiality is not. If others hold logically inconsistent views than that does not mar by platform. Forgive me if I took my opponent's question of "How can society condone this type of cruelty towards animals but condemn bestiality?" to be rhetorical rather than the topic of the debate. I am arguing for the ethics of the two specific practices and I have no interest in defending the moral views of others. Now that I am finished clearing the charges against the validity of my position, let me move on to defend the position itself. My opponent says: "No one ever argued that "having sex with a non-consenting individual" is moral. Therefore, what my opponent is implying is irrelevant." However, I quite clearly explained that an animal is a non-consenting individual. If my opponent argues that having sex with an animal is moral and an animal is a non-consenting individual, than my opponent has argued that having sex with a non-consenting individual is moral. She never contested the argument animals are not able to give consent. My opponent says, "Again, my opponent did not supply a citation for this claim. Which could be possibly concocted from thin air. Regardless, one can argue that slaughtering animals is an "aggressive" act. Since the slaughtering of animals is the unnecessary use of force, which inflicts, to some extent, pain and/or suffering on the animal involved. "Bleeding an animal out," is not my idea of "non-aggressive" behavior." Here we seem to be missing the point of an ethical debate. Of course I have "concocted" this argument. I am creating an ethical argument based on rational principles which I believe we can all reach through logical thinking. I clearly outlined my definition of aggression and explained what acts animals should be protected from, what ones they should not, and why. To recap: an animals mental state implies (for reasons I elaborated on that I am not going to restate) that we should not cause it suffering but that killing it is acceptable. It is wrong to cause suffering to something because of the nonaggression principle. It is also wrong to kill humans under the nonaggression principle (and to destroy human property, and so on) but I also explained that these stipulations would not logically be extended to animals. There are sound logical and ethical principles which lead to my position that the eating of animals is moral and bestiality is not. Forgive me for not establishing my entire ethical framework in 8000 characters. I could go in to why it is ethical to kill humans during war, in fact I could write about every imaginable issue that could come up. I'm not going to because that's not what the debate is about. I'm extending the ethical position only to include the distinction between humans and animals, the distinction between killing and causing pain/suffering, and why rape, torture, and the murder of humans (but not animals) are wrong. Again, I am not a social apologist and it was in no way clearly indicated that I am expected to be. For the sake of argument, I could be suggesting that we slaughter all animals by lethal injection. I am not concerned with the exact details because the details of the practice can be studied extensively once the ethics are established. The actual practices of slaughterhouses, which I have repeated expressed my disapproval of, are not concerned with the moral argument that I am trying to make. Final Considerations: Remember that in the second round, I changed my position from the first round because I was originally assuming that the title was the resolution and was arguing based on the massive logical hole in the title. In order to improve the debate I decided to accept (what I thought was) the implied resolution "the eating of animals is more unethical than bestiality" Also, my opponent has repeatedly attacked my lack of sources. My argument, however, was meant to draw solely from rational considerations that do not require an expertise in the topic of animal sexuality. I still maintain that animal behavior is irrelevant to this debate; this debate concerns human behavior. Though my opponent has twice ignored this analogy, I will mention it again: animals brutally kill and eat each other in the wild. If my opponent's rationale is correct than surely we are right to do the same. I believe, as does (first source?) my Professor Peter Brown that a basic ethical argument requires sources only so there can be an agreement of facts, but not to back the argument itself. I have no factual disagreements with my opponent, my argument is purely an ethical one. And now I am all out of room.