Zoophilia/Bestiality should be legal and is not inherently immoral

“Well, obviously there isn't a scientific method to measure pain or harm--yet. However, it's absurd to argue that it is entirely subjective because of that.” I don’t know how to interpret the idea of ‘partially’ subjective. Something is either objective or it’s not. If you have a method that I can follow to reproduce your conclusions on which harm is greater or less than what risk; then that is an objective measurement. If you don’t it’s subjective no matter how many people happen to agree with your conclusions. “Most reasonable people can agree, for instance, that one death is less harmful than two deaths (barring side effects), that spending a relatively small amount of money is less harmful than widespread poverty, et cetera.” You are comparing similar events, you haven’t measured them you are just saying 2X > X. Can you compare whether one death is less harmful than you being poor? “Well, to a certain extent one should reject section B, because you basically are trying to make it so that your opponent has no arguments by pre-emptively banning most of them. Not cool.” If you weren’t going to accept the premises in section B you should have started a new debate. This is the last round and there is no room for me to support them. Not cool! I can’t stop anyone from voting but I am really quite surprised at the number of people who said this variant leaves them no arguments. In my experience claiming the animal is harmed or doesn’t consent is the first line of assault. I can only conclude that that part of my argument is so perfect no one dares challenge it :p “But my argument depends on the quote, "Morality is independent of law, but law should be dependent on morality." There's arguably enough of an opening for me to get this argument through.” Except I also made a premise for the moral standard to be used in the scope of the argument. I’ve had 10,000 word debates about morality on other sites. If it was reasonable to expect that we could argue about moral standards and then argue about how that standard is applied to bestiality I wouldn’t have that premise. (I had to cut 2,800 characters from the response I wrote to this) “Moreover, I would argue that how ethical taking an action is should be based on the probability of different results. For instance, it's unethical for me to shoot at someone even if I miss and kill a Hitler clone... unless I'm guaranteed to miss whatever I'm shooting at.” If I drive high and drunk it’s a lot more risky than driving alert and sober, but what you are talking about is outlawing driving because it’s hard to prove someone drove drunk or high after the fact. You are not talking about a risk, but proving that an unwarranted risk was taken. “How many zoophiles can honestly say that they are completely sure as to the behavior of animals they are attracted to?” If you mean completely sure of how an animal will react they don’t need to be sure of how they will react in order to avoid raping them or hurting them since the animal can communicate non-consent or pain almost instantly. “How many can say that they will not give the animal a disease, or vice versa?” The vast majority, they are checked by doctors and their pets are checked by vets regularly. “How many can say that they are sure that the pieces of anatomy in question are even compatible?” The vast majority again. This information is easily inferable as well as explicitly available thanks to the zoophile community. “We do not allow people to discharge firearms randomly because doing so is stupidly risky. The same, I think, applies to mating with an animal.” Interesting example because people actually are allowed to roam into the woods and randomly discharge their firearms at any random animal who happens to wander by save humans and their pets. In a split second of incompetence a firearm can kill someone. The same is not true of sex with animals known to have compatible anatomy. The greatest risk most zoophiles take is that they do something the animal doesn’t like for 1-2 seconds before they stop. There is no real risk of rape unless the human intends it or is well below normal intelligence. “If something is so incredibly prone to abuse that it's too risky, then it should be banned.” It seems like this is a novel approach from you. Everything you said before had to do with catching animal rapist, not risk inherent in the practice. So what makes bestiality as risky as Ebola? Can you even demonstrate it’s riskier than homosexual sex given the HIV issue? “2. When they are so prone to abuse that the most ethical thing to do is eliminate them. In otherwords, hardly ever.” You have not demonstrated that the most ethical thing is to ban something ‘prone to abuse’. You don’t seem to feel the need to accept the moral standard I set for the debate so I am certainly not going to accept utilitarianism just because you started using it. I am interpreting ‘prone to abuse’ as meaning hard to catch animal rapist because you haven’t established anything else at this point. “3. Percentage. Of course.” What is the percentage? “I don't care about liberty. I don't care about rights.” I can see that…. “I care about making sure people don't get hurt, and protecting them. I will do anything for that.” Some people will do anything for liberty and rights. Will you hurt them to ensure the dominance of your moral standard? “There is no rule, in my opinion, that does not have a scenario where it should be violated.” Except the rule that one should not engage in bestiality it seems. “Nothing is absolute. I don't have some magical "right." What I do have is a brain, and reason, and the ability to use that to determine the most ethical course of action.” I have a brain, and reason, and I have asked you to tell me how you determine the most ethical course of action and you said ‘Well, obviously there isn't a scientific method’…. “To answer your questions respectively, yes” What about randomly shocking (electric) or scaring the animal? (already pointed out) “It has everything to do with the morality of human-animal sex. Act-utilitarians are perfectly capable of supporting making something illegal even if it's acceptable in rare circumstances.” You have not established it’s only acceptable in rare circumstances, but only that it’s harder (than where the victims could speak) to prove in a court of law that a specific instance was unacceptable after the fact. You know it occurs to me that is probably why rapist often kill their human victims. The law is causing people to killed ontop of being raped. Would act-utilitarians then be required to advocate the repeal of rape laws? “Keep in mind that by not making something illegal, you're basically saying, "By all means, go out and do it!" Which is exactly what I think about human animal sex. I never said animal rape should be legal, so I am saying “by no means go out and rape animals, but by all means have consensual non-harmful sex with them.” “When something does go wrong, that is at least partly your fault.” How much more is it my fault then, if the enforcement of the law is itself something wrong? “It's a great deal less risky, though, and the harm resulting from the law is a great deal more.” No the act of consensual sex is no more risky without cameras than with. We were talking about the chances of punishing or preventing rape. Risk of non-conviction, not risk of immorality or harm. Again how did you determine that such a law would result in more harm and prevent less risk than banning bestiality? “After..Before the fact, the risk is what's wrong--the risk that you are committing rape, or will harm your partner.” I guess I did misunderstand you. I did not see any arguments for an inherent risk of rape or harm before this round. You can eliminate the risk of rape to 0% by learning about animal communication beforehand and testing your understanding of that communication with the individual animal beforehand with non-sexual interaction. You can eliminate the risk of harm to below 1% (just a guess and that part comes from the uncertainty of medical tests) by checking yourself and the animal for contagious diseases and reading up on the actions you are planning on performing. In other words for an individual the risk can be mitigated to insignificance. Animal rape (and human rape for that matter) does not occur as random percentage of sexual encounters but because one party actively chooses to ignore the consent and comfort of the other. “See act-preference utilitarianism.” Is sending me off the Wikipedia to support your moral standard any more fair then handing it out as a premise in the opening argument? I did look it up but I am going to respond in the comments. “Courts aren't equipped to take every single member of the animal kingdom out of the wild...” Who needs to talk about wild? There are breeding programs in zoos, on farms, and pet owners throughout the world decide independently to allow their pets to have sex. “Animals are not shown to have romantic love. Love, sure, but that's no different than the love they have for someone who isn't a sexual partner but a close friend or family member. As far as I know, romantic love is exclusive to humans.” I won’t argue against that, but humans have romantic love and zoophiles aren’t going to have love or romantic love for a piece of porn. So I say (as if it isn’t obvious) that they aren’t the same and porn is not a substitute for a real partner. And even if it’s not romantic love in the classic human style it’s nice to be loved by the love of your life. I have one last question to ask before I leave you to the last round. What if you made bestiality legal only if you record the act (as with my example law) so that it can be reviewed and the animal’s behavior can be assessed to determine whether they consented? That would seem to solve the after the fact evidence problem. When in doubt the accused can hand over the video and prove their innocence (I still say they shouldn’t have to).