Sex with animals is ethically permissible

I'd like to point out to CON rules 1 and 3 of the debate. Wait until "round 3" to bring rebuttal. CON will see a counter-rebuttal, but not until "round 4", and not until after CON raises his rebuttal in "round 3". I will not waste my time and space on actual counter-rebuttal here; that is not what this space is for, and I have no responsibiliy to do so until then. Animals have pragmatic value to People, at best More on game theoryBecause of the lack of any thing that may be considered a soul, evolutionary strategies are relevant to the discussion of what beings may have value. For Darwinian evolvers , their evolutionary strategy necessitates death; it cannot be divorced from the cycle of "1) have children with mutations, 2) organisms compete over resources 3) losers die 4) winners return to step (1)" by which the Darwinian survival strategy is played. Darwinian evolution requires the spread of "neutral" and beneficial mutations in populations, which only happens when the older generation dies and makes way for the younger generation; without this expected death, any significant change in the environmet constitutes an existential threat, and overpopulation itself becomes an existential threat. Critters which evolve primarily in the Darwinian mode cannot and must not realize the first and most basic freedom to be, and extending it to them without fully making them people is an insult to what they are. Without an after-life, however, only their external effect on the world is relevant to their species or any other species. As such animals have only pragmatic value. For memetic evolvers, death is neither necessary or beneficial. The unit of evolution is the idea, which is the DNA of memetics, and any organism or entity able to understand that idea may benefit from that adaptation. If one person has a good idea, all people can benefit without the need for any death. In this way, they ideally form a community where the ideas compete, and the people do not. As a rational goal of people is to prevent death, and as this life is all we have, it then becomes important to guarantee freedom. As such, people have intrinsic value to themselves which does no insult to the survivability of the community of people, and thus people have every responsibility to accept the intrinsic value of other people as equals ought be treated equally More on ethicsAs my opponent has called into question my basis for stipulating that freedom necessitates responsibilities... As equals ought be treated equally, if an entity wishes for itself freedom to be they must wish too for others of an equal existence to enjoy that same freedom to be. If they seek to defend their freedom from imposition (ie, if they wish to claim their freedom), as equals ought be treated equally, they ought defend the freedom of others. This ought implies responsibility. Rejecting the first moral rule, that equals ought be treated equally, further forces a rejection of the logic of freedom and responsibility; they are not simply axiomatic but derived from the shared first principles of this debate. More on existential sustainability Simply put, if people find use for animals in relieving our sex drives, it is a fundamental good for animals, as we then have a reason to save them when we save ourselves from some existential threat. The difference between ethics and pragmatism Defense against special pleadingA popular retreat of those seeking to argue against the ethical acceptability of sex with animals is the inevitable comparison between it and pedophilia; Without a discussion of why pedophilia is to be considered unacceptable, the relevant difference between it and beastiality cannot be ascertained, hence why even though this debate is not about pedophilia, I retain a burden of proof to establish that these two cases are different, provided that I do not want to endorse the unrestricted rape of children, and thus the discussion on pedophilia is necessary for my case. On the pragmatism of sex with animals While it may be possible in the future that there will be people who are indistinguishable from animals, this is not that day. No animal that is alive today is capable of growing up into a person. Any pragmatic objection to sex with either animals or consensual sex with the animal-shaped-people is an objection on purely pragmatic terms and has no bearing on the ethical acceptability of sex with animals. As such, an objection on those grounds has no bearing on the resolution. Any further objections that CON brings are appeals to emotion. I have not claimed that animals don't feel, merely that it doesn't matter whether or not they feel (Unless, of course, CON accepts the other side of the coin of his argument and acknowledges that sex with animals can make them feel good). Unless CON can establish that the internal emotional state of some animal is of some relevance such objections are and continue to be red herrings, particularly due to the necessity of death for said animals. On common sense The special pleading of CONThis particlar point was in fact a basis from which to argue that CON has a burden of special pleading which he needs to address. He has made claims that imposition upon animals is evil in the slaughterhouse, on the farm, that even so much as owning a pet or milking a cow might be considered evil but has yet to forward any suitable argument as to why those things might be considered evil; I have certainly met my burden to demonstrate why they are not. On the necessity of imposition "That [I]mpositions is axiomatically necessary by the dictates of survival." "[A]ll animals eat other living things- by definition that"s what animals are." both are admissions that people must eat, and that imposition is necessary. Further, while he has mentioned vegetarianism, he still has yet to provide evidence that humanity can surivive against existential threats as a society of vegans as only veganism (and not vegarianism) seeks to end imposition upon animals. If animals are justified in eating each other, we are justified in eating them, and as eating (and in so doing, killing) them is the greatest possible insult to any entitlement to a purported freedom to be, then no animal life at all except for entirely passive plant eaters would be justified, and we might as well just execute ourselves and every predator in existence as ethical criminals right now. In terms of defense, we have eradicated or attempted to eradicate [1] various animals which are existenial threats to humanity and defended ourselves in other ways not from clear and present danger, but also from possible danger or out of mere inconvenience. We kill whole populations of rodents and insects, and are willing to escalate to killing various animals for mere tresspass or convenience or because they might make us sick. We defend our deer population (which we keep to hunt!), and our human population in light of the over-blown deer population by engaging in wolf harvests not because they have attacked our children and livestock or made us able to hunt but because they might do those things. CON must either argue to damn these activities, or accept that they are ethical and along with them accept that imposition of sex with animals is equally acceptable. ConclusionsCON has yet to provide any argument in favor of his ethical principles, or even detail what those principles are. He has not argued his accepted claim that sex with animals is ethically impermissible, IE that some necessary causal relationship exists between "sex with animals" and some ethically impermissible activity. Ethics are clearly for people, not animals. Pragmatic unacceptability is diffrent from ethical unacceptability. Common sense dictates that imposition upon animals is acceptable and even necessary for the existence of people. Therefore having sex with animals is ethically permissible. Bibliography [1] http://en.wikipedia.org...