Is Bestiality Wrong?

That's a good clue about morality. Some things you just feel in your gut. It might be instinct, it may be the voice of God or conscience, who knows.I don't believe bestiality is appropriate behaviour for any self-respecting or kind person. End of story. ana is being stubborn this time.

Excellent! Bravo!Great post, Archer.It is a very thin line indeed.On many occasions, I have been fooled by appearances. If your Bob had worn clean underwear to work, on the outside albeit, he may have done so with the intent of making a statement. People do things like that at parties, or in bands, or in protest of 'normalcy'. If you are prejudice, you may miss the point, and skip the lesson.Prejudice can be a dangerous thing. Complacency is just as bad. I have learned great things from the homeless, from the drunken old timers, from the begrudged wives and mothers. I have felt great kinship with their humanity, but sure knowledge that I must not become comfortable in their shoes.Look at public nudity: immoral by Christain standards and generally illegal in the US. I am not repulsed in the least by display of nudity in other cultures. In my culture however, it is such an unusual thing, a thing that relativists don't go about doing, which atheists don't go about doing, which any 'normal' person doesn't go about doing, that it is foolish not to question a person's motives or, ultimately, their sanity. If a person is completely oblivious to their surrounding 'norm', it speaks of a bigger problem.It is true that we may find no rational basis for despising a behaviour. It is true that sometimes genius behaves in irrational ways...er, non standard ways. The artist can see through the convention at times, and be called an eccentric. The serial killer may do the same, and be called insane. Very often it is not ultimately about morality, but social etiquette, and to wantonly disobey etiquette is to walk a very thin line.Your post was way too good for my petty remarks. I can only say that I firmly believe that committed man and woman were intended to have sexual relations, and this is the only rationale I need have in the matter. It is of no consequence whether man or woman or chicken gets hurt, ill, or annoyed. It is of no consequence whether or not society deems bestiality acceptable. It is better to examine what we believe than to spend time rationalizing what we don't understand. IOW I should question whether my belief in consentual, procreative relations is 'right' and reasonable, and only then hold another behaviour up to that standard. If the standard is flawed, the conclusions will be flawed. I believe the standard for morality as we know it IS flawed, but that is another subject.

Well, there is another clue. An animal lower on the food chain should not be used for mating purposes, unless humans have some weird unstinct to play act before they consume their prey. I don't see that we do.

It's weird, and I told you I will stubborn this one out. Since I am convinced that sexual pleasure is only an impetus for procreation, and that it should not be an end in itself, I have no problem justifying the weirdness on a rational basis.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

Taz, sometimes it is good to look at things rationally. Is there any rational reason to have sex with animals? Is there any really good empirical way to prove that it is a licit behaviour for humans?For the record, I thought Archer had a good point in general, but I also pointed out what you did about sanity. Read the whole thing. Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

Stile, I don't think everyone must follow my personal standards, but all of us have a double standard. We have laws which say yes, all of us need to follow certain standards, but then we pick and choose which standards they will be.I could have a rational basis for telling you what to wear, and I DO have a rational basis for what I believe about bestiality. I can't control you, of course, but instead of telling me nothing is wrong with bestiality, give me a reason why it is useful.

Call me old fashioned, but I think there is nothing wrong with using an animal for food, even thought it is sad on the mass market level. It is immoral to treat an animal inhumanely, however. I think that it borders on the inhumane to impose sex upon animals.More importantly, it appears everyone has strayed away from the idea that it is possible to treat ourselves inhumanely. Morality is not simply or only about what we do to others, although in modern culture it is usually portrayed that way. More so, morality is about what we consider to be good for US. Surely we can say that any form of sexual gratification that we enjoy is good for us, but what does it say about our dignity? What does it say about our level of respect for our own bodie?

Stile, you must understand that 'some people like to have sex with animals', and 'some people think it is not becoming to human dignity' are not arguments that go any way towards 'is this action moral or immoral'?If your greatest standard is that we do no harm to others, then for you it is moral.For me it is immoral. I already told you. Humans are meant to have sex with humans.Now, get busy and tell me you have some way of knowing I am wrong. If you can't prove that we should have sex with animals, I can feel free to believe that we should not. I can be free to believe that since others are also human, they should not have sex with animals either. I can't stop them, but I have no problem saying it is wrong, any more than you have saying it is right.That's the problem with relativity. No one knows who is right or wrong, but they want to act like they do.

This reply is towards both of your posts.You may notice that all of these threads are the same discussion over and again. The relative/absolute threads are the same as the homosexuality threads, are the same as the bestiality threads. It is such simple stuff.Lesson 1. You can't judge a fellow human's morality. He or she may honestly believe they are doing nothing wrong.Lesson 2. Believing something is harmless does not mean it is harmless. It does mean the person is guiltless of intentional harmful motive.Lesson 3. Absolutism does not mean doing the same darn thing in every situation.Here is an example, likewise far-fetched as an analogy.Pesticides can not be consumed by humans. If a 3 year old dumps a pesticide in mama's lemonade, he is blameless, but mama gets ill or dies. If mama dumps a pesticide in the child's milk, she is evil, and child gets ill or dies. IOW, same cause, same result, different verdict. Is poisoning someone moral? No. Relativism say 'yes' it may be moral in some places and some cultures and times. Absolutism says it is always immoral, always will be, always was. Neither absolutism nor relativism deal with guilt for a crime committed, but strictly with the definition of 'crime'. No one seems to be getting that concept.

So you want me to feel about the same way I would if I saw a couple slobbering all over each other at a bar, or a guy mooning me, or someone's underwear left in a pubic restroom?We can be disgusted at many things and look the other way. We can't look the other way when something really wrong is happening. You are not being sensible here. You are using your opinion that nothing very strange or wrong is going on, and judging my hypothetical reaction based on that. Yes, I know. You are concluding that bestiality is distasteful to you, but ok in general. Since you have dicided that bestiality is not wrong, you feel that you should force this view on others.

What if someone were to forcibly prevent me from forcing my views on others? You don't see that making something a 'freedom' is legitimizing it?

Sure. I guarantee you that if you passed a house where a man was raping a woman, you would not care about freedoms, because you have determined that act to be wrong. This is not an attempt to trip you up or talk in circles, it is a plain fact that whether or not ana finds something wrong doesn't matter one bit when society makes it's determination.

In turn, raping my freedom, and thus illustrating that freedom is not the real objective. I am only free to do what you think is ok. We all suffer from that.

We all buy into it to some extent. Obviously, freedom has not always been taken for granted, but we are only free to do those things which society says are acceptable. We were 'free' to capture and control people for 1000's of years. Anyone can see that conplete freedom is not possible, and therefore freedom itself is not the greatest goal of morality. The greatest goal is in determining which actions we should be free to choose. If you use 'freedom' as both the ideal and the rational measuring stick, you get into these kinds of messes where you know you are contradicting yourself. I have no idea how my quote says this. It is you who is putting limits on my freedoms, in a purely hypothetical situation.I am not sure why you are mentioning the right to life. I certainly believe that everyone is 'endowed' with the right to the pursuit of happiness, but for the reasons already stated, no one has the right to pursue the 'wrong' kind of happiness. If your goal can be met by robbing rich widows, knocking off your benefactor, cheating on your spouse, OR having sex with beasts, that kind of happiness is not licit.Since you keep repeating yourself in ever regressing circles, I will ask you one more time to step out of your little box and realize that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness CAN NOT determine in totality which actions are legal, licit, moral, etc. You can keep trading in 'what ana says' for 'what Stile says' but you are meeting the same blockade every time. It's not about what anybody says, it is about what makes sense, and again, you have not been able to show me any reason why bestiality should be practiced by humans. The least you could do is show me some web link with our closest counterparts in the animal kingdom doing it.