Bestiality/Zoophilia should be legal and is not inherently immoral

I will answer my opponent’s arguments in the order they were presented: C5 Pro can’t retroactively define the terms of this debate. This is unfair because 1) I allocated space in my previous speeches based on the original terms of the debate 2) Pro could always redefine terms in hindsight and 3) This case is particularly abusive because he is redefining a premise I am, by his rules, not allowed to attack. Pro’s original R1 burden is to show that bestiality is 1) not immoral and 2) should be legal. Pro relies on the premise “If a practice is moral it should be legal.” Pro has presented no argument that bestiality is moral and so has failed to meet his BOP. Pro’s redefinition renders his original premise as “If a practice is moral or amoral it should be legal.” This is substantially different from his original premise- under the redefinition the government would have no ability to govern amoral activities like traffic laws or routine border crossings or literally anything that isn’t inherently immoral. C1.1 Pro offers no coherent argument to dispute my face punching example. In R2 Pro concedes that random face punching is immoral but in R3 he does not dispute that if I happened to randomly punch someone committing a crime this would be a local instance of a moral act. Pro even says this instance of face punching would not be against the law, which in his concept of law and morality equates to saying the instance would be moral. This example demonstrates that local instances of ethical actions do not render a practice moral- e.g. one instance where randomly punching a person in the face happens to be ethical does not make the practice of random face punching ethical. Pro fails to interact with my argument that a practice must be evaluated as moral based on how it is actually practiced. My claim is that features inherent to bestiality- namely psychological differences and a massive communication barrier between man and animal- render bestiality ethically unstable; even if these barriers could be overcome (which I maintain they couldn’t), the difficulty of doing so means that bestiality is prone to being performed unethically. This is why Pro’s example of human sex fails. There is nothing inherent to human sex that renders it prone to unethical practice. A 95% rape rate could not be attributed to anything but humans intentionally committing rape at a very high rate. Alternatively, a 95% non-consensual bestiality rate could be attributed to humans projecting their understanding of psychology onto animals or being unable to reliably communicate consent. Pro says “a law which permits a single instance of violating rights is improper.” Legalized bestiality would certainly permit instances of violating rights. Animals are unable to report rape, so there is no way to practically ensure that individual instances of bestiality are not rape. It would be impossible to determine whether individual acts of bestiality were rape. C1.2 Moral accountability is ensured in human-human sex by the ability of humans to report rape. Pro’s examples of covering up rape miss the point- unaccountability is inherent to bestiality. To get away with rape you have to actually hide the act of rape or obscure evidence. With bestiality there is no “getting away with it”- as soon as you finish raping an animal you know there will be no repercussions. Allowing bestiality functionally allows animal rape- there is no way to determine if an act of bestiality was rape since the victim can’t testify to lack of consent. This difficulty does not exist in human sex. Pro says the burden is on me to demonstrate that non-consensual bestiality is prevalent. This sort of thinking is exactly why a practice that inherently lacks accountability is immoral. There is no way of determining how prevalent nonconsensual bestiality is, so no one could ever prove that it is prevalent. Pro tries to use the inherent invisibility of nonconsensual bestiality as evidence of its non-existence. If there is no practical way to distinguish between consensual and non-consensual bestiality, it is immoral. C2.1 Pro claims he has made a non-explicit argument negating H.2. Pro should make his argument explicit so I can know what I am supposed to refute. Judges, don’t construct Pro’s case for him- if he doesn’t present an explicit argument then he hasn’t met his BOP.C2.2 Pro concedes that humans are unique in many aspects- this means it should not be surprising if we are the only species capable of consent. C2.3.1 Pro doesn’t interact with my argument- simply having preferences is not granting consent. He doesn’t refute my example. Pro only says a preference is “the internal mental element required for consent.” I don’t actually know what he means by this- but something being required for consent does not make it sufficient for consent. My argument is that a lot more goes into consent than just preference. C2.3.2 Pro says that “failure to object is implied consent.” This is blatantly not the case- there could be a myriad of reasons why a person fails to object despite not wanting to engage, e.g. intimidation or social pressure. If I walk up to you, take your wallet out of your pocket, and you do nothing, have you implicitly consented? Pro says “unless Jill is unconscious, etc.” but the only way for Jack to know that Jill is not in fact unable to object is to rely on communicated consent. How is Jack to differentiate a Jill who is unable to object from a Jill who is simply failing to object? Communication is inseperable from consent because it is the only way to ascertain that the other party actually consents. C2.3.3 Consent is defined in R1 as permission or agreement; my R1 criticism was that these are moral concepts that rely on human psychology and human language. Pro redefines consent as the ability to have a preference- but having a preference is not the same as granting permission or agreeing to something. Pro posts a video of a dog knowing the name of objects. Knowing the name of objects is not the same as making a decision. Being able to pick out different toys is not the same as being able to consider the question “do I want to have sex?” Pro does not refute that animals do not understand what it means to have permission transgressed- this is crucial to my point that permission involves complex moral concepts that animals do not have. If animals are incapable of granting permission they are incapable of consent. Again, Pro admits that it is guesswork about how an animal feels about specific details of sexual interaction but somehow believes we know how they feel about the overall interaction. Pro simply asserts that this is the case, but if we are unable to determine whether an animal consents to specific details how can we know about the interaction as a whole? This guesswork does not exist in human sex. Pro wants to rely on animal body language to determine if an animal withdraws consent, but again this is just guesswork. Animals lack the ability to communicate their preferences. Pro concedes that animals can’t consider consequences of sex- this concedes my point that animals do not make decisions. If animals cannot consider circumstances or different courses of action then they are not making decisions. Pro leaves most of my psychological analysis untouched. I offered an explanation for how the examples Pro cites as animals having concepts is indicative only of their ability to be conditioned for certain behavior. Extend my argument that responding to stimuli is not the same as having concepts and that permission and agreement are complex concepts that dependent on an array of other moral concepts. Pro also doesn’t address my explanation of how his psychology of “permission” is flawed. I explained how simply engaging in an action is not indicative of the ability to grant permission. Permission is a complex moral interaction that depends on communication. C3.1 Pro has an incredibly naïve view of social interaction. In Pro’s world you can avoid conflicts of interest and bias by simply resolving to not abuse power. In the real world people abuse power even when they have resolved not to and sometimes without even realizing it. In the real world, having a sexual relationship with a creature you have complete control over is almost inevitably going to result in at least some degree of abuse of power. Simply being in a position of conflict of interest in unethical. No amount of resolving not to abuse power would convince us that a judge presiding over his own son’s criminal trial is an ethical situation. C3.3 Again, extend that humans have difficulty understanding that “no means no” when interacting with other humans. Pro keeps repeating provisos about not mistreating animals or “punishing expression”- but this is precisely the point. Humans train animals for all sorts of reasons, how do you separate out the impact of training a dog not to bark at night from unintentionally training it not to bark when upset by your sexual advances? Pro just asserts that animals will “let you know” if they don’t like something, presumably by whispering in your ear. This is irrelevant to my contention that bestiality is immoral because it violates obligations of care. The issue is the power imbalance between man and beast and the conflict of interest involved bestiality. C4 Extend that informed consent is the only morally relevant form of consent. Consent isn’t valid if it is given under false pretenses, etc. If I don’t know what I am agreeing to, my agreement isn’t morally binding. To say otherwise would allow for all sorts of manipulative and unfair forms of consent. Uninformed consent is also morally incoherent- in what sense am I agreeing to something if I do not even know what that something is? Agreement and permission are incoherent without there being something to agree on. If I don’t understand the thing being agreed on then there is no way I have actually consented.