Bestiality should be illegal

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to debate you on this issue! :) May the best arguments win.I do not necessarily personally believe or endorse all the arguments presented here – I'm just representing my side of this debate.I accept the burden of proof to prove that bestiality should be illegal. Unless corrected by my opponent I assume that "should be" involves ethical, moral and legal concerns, among others. I accept all given definitions. However, unless explicitly stated otherwise by my opponent, I assume I may extrapolate on them in an ethical, moral or legal context, with the understanding that these extrapolations are refutable and arguably subjective.What makes an act illegal?This is subjective, so perhaps my definition will not match my opponent's. However, I believe that every animal has certain inalienable rights. These rights include life, health, happiness, safety and freedom. Your rights are only limited in that you should not violate the rights of others. Most largescale issues (gun control, abortion, prayer in schools) concerns whether and to which extent it is acceptable to assert certain rights at the cost of others' rights. Somewhere in that spectrum, society, law, philosophy and justice draws the line "illegal". The violation of rights may be termed "abuse". Not all forms of abuse are "illegal", making the term all the more arbitrary. However, my argument states that bestiality is comparable to rape, and as such an abuse of such magnitude that it should be illegal.Animals have the right to health. Humans violate that right when they beat, starve, or otherwise assault an animal. Under my guidelines this is abuse, and should be illegal. This raises the question whether bestiality is assault, is abuse.What would make bestiality comparable to rape?I think we can all agree (hopefully!) that rape is nonconsensual sex. To answer this question, the central issue is whether all, some or no bestiality is nonconsensual. I would note that just because the sex is nonconsensual does not mean the victim is incapable of consenting to anything. Take pedophilia – children are capable of consenting to various activities, but the justice system holds that they are incapable of consenting to a sexual relationship with an adult because they do not understand what it means and are ignorant of its consequences. Similarly, a person who is drunk or drugged and coerced into sex in that state of mind can under certain circumstances be a rape victim because he or she was not, at the time, mentally capable of consent. I have the burden of proof to establish that bestiality is comparable to rape, except between species. My argument is that, like a drunken person or a human child, the non-human animal's mental capacities are not comparable to the human's mental capacities to the extent that the animal is capable of consenting to sex with that human. This territory is a little blurry because we aren't actually technologically at the point where we can determine whether animals feel or to what extent their thinking patterns are comparable to ours. As such, from a moral, ethical and legal standpoint, I would argue: rather safe than sorry! If you aren't sure whether or not an action is abuse/assault/rape, better refrain from doing it until you are certain it's acceptable behavior.Can bestiality be an abuse of power?At least one aspect of rape is certain in regard to animals, and this is found in the use of rape to abusively assert power. When your boss, parent or teacher makes sexual advances, there is always a coercive element: resistance will have negative repercussions on your subsistence and health, even if the act itself is not physically damaging. Pets rely entirely on their human owners to care for them. In the case of owner and pet, bestiality is rape because the animal is unable to survive without their caretaker, and thus the caretaker is all-powerful, and resistance is both futile and destructive, and thus not a legitimate choice. The sexual encounter is, to some extent, forced. Humans also tend to have great power over the vast majority of multicellular species in the animal kingdom. With our weapons technology we can kill a shark or a bear in one shot. We have a responsibility not to abuse that power over the survival of animals.Is an animal mentally capable of consenting to bestiality?Now to the question whether animals are mentally capable of consenting to sex with humans. Decision-making skills are attributed to the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of a child's brain which is underdeveloped; this is the part of an adult's brain which is inhibited by alcohol consumption. Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com.... Humans have often been lauded as possessing the most complex and sophisticated, if not the largest, prefrontal cortex in the entire animal kingdom. "The prefrontal cortex [is] the brain region that most separates us from our nearest genetic neighbors. The human prefrontal cortex has not only been shown to be more developed than that of other mammals, but it also has unique morphology and gene expression." (2007) Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...However, not all scientists agree that the human frontal cortex is the source of our superior innovation, productivity and problem-solving. A very popular paper has attributed human neurological uniqueness to the brain's flexibility, and, in a hypothesis highly relevant to this debate, ability to put situations in context: "At the core of our uniquely human cognitive abilities is the capacity to see things from different perspectives, or to place them in a new context. We propose that this was made possible by two cognitive transitions. First, the large brain of Homo erectus facilitated the onset of recursive recall: the ability to string thoughts together into a stream of potentially abstract or imaginative thought. [...] We propose that the capacity to see things in context arose much later, following the appearance of anatomically modern humans. This second transition was brought on by the onset of contextual focus: the capacity to shift between a minimally contextual analytic mode of thought, and a highly contextual associative mode of thought, conducive to combining concepts in new ways and 'breaking out of a rut'." (2013) Source: http://users.on.net...If both transitions took place starting with Homo erectus, the human species is the only known animal species which is capable of recursive recall and contextual focus, both of which massively improve our circumspection, analysis of consequences, anxieties and decision-making. A sober, adult, healthy, sane human can decide whether or not to have sex with another adult human; an animal cannot neurologically reach a comparable level of consent and understanding.Conclusion: Why does bestiality qualify as an act that should be illegal? Because animals are unable to comprehend actions and their consequences in any way approaching human cognition, they are unable to consent to interspecies sex with humans. Additionally, bestiality is abusive in cases when the animal in question is a pet or otherwise reliant on human caretaking. Thus, bestiality is rape; rape is assault and abuse; assault and abuse should be illegal; rape should be illegal; bestiality should be illegal. Thank you :)