this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
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Perry Bible Fellowship
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Would you consider bestiality immoral then? The animal equivalent of bestiality (interspecies sex) occurs regularly between different species after all.
I am not able to provide an objective moral reason if other animals may be treated differently from humans. If consent cannot be taken into account, raping animals is not immoral.
The sole argument could be that bestiality harms or at the very least exposes an animal to a significant risk of harm. But then again, killing an animal certainly harms it much worse but this would be morally acceptable in such a system, so the harm an animal faces isn't really part of the equation.
this doesn't refute what I said.
What I tried to say is:
If treating other animals like they behave towards other animals is acceptable, the only reason beastiality would be illegal is because of "ew".
I'd say that's one reason why our standards should be higher than the standards of animals. Suffering is bad even when non-humans are affected.
laws are bad, and don't have anything to do with morality
Substitute illegal with "prohibited according to the social contract of your anarchist commune" then. Or with whatever form of society and its rule system you would like to live in where the rules are a moral guide.
that's not how morality (or rules) works at all. morals are formed from an ethical system. deontologists have the categorical imperative, utilitarianism and hedonism have the maximization of pleasure, divine command theorists have the command of the deity, virtue ethicists have moderation between competing extremes. if any of them prohibit sex with animals, it's probably only divine command theory and maybe the categorical imperative. I guess the big "eww" factor could put off the virtue ethicists, too (bestiality isn't very aesthetic).
rules and laws are meant to keep social order. where they prohibit thing like killing or some other ethically bad thing, it is only a coincidence.