On Thursday, Mr. Michael Patrick McPhail earned the honor of becoming the very first person ever to be charged with bestiality in Washington State.
I have written about bestiality once before in this venue. At that time, the state of Washington was considering passing a law against doing the nasty with varmints.
Washington, back then, was one of the few states that did not specifically ban human-livestock intercourse. The lack of such a statute was more of an oversight, or loophole, than a deliberate omission. It’s one of those things that everyone sort of assumed must be banned somewhere. But all of a sudden in 2005 they realized that it wasn’t, when the police, investigating a bizarre death by horse copulation, busted up a clandestine bestiality ring — only to admit that they couldn’t charge the horse-buggerers with any crime.
To the surprise of many, the proposed law was hotly debated. The Evergreen State had become something of a secret Bestiality Mecca, and the “animal-loving” advocates were not about to surrender their lifestyle without a fight. The vehement pro-bestial advocates used arguments which will sound familiar to libertarians: You can’t legislate morality. It’s consensual. A victimless crime. But the law passed anyway, to the relief of Mr. McPhail’s pit bull terrier, among others.
Washington’s new law against bestiality is part of a general anti-cruelty statute; it defines any sexual exploitation of an animal as cruelty to the animal. The pro-bestial libertarians argue — quite rightly — that this is absurd and wrong, since some animals quite demonstrably enjoy sex with humans, and even initiate the encounters themselves. They also point out the obvious irony that killing, skinning, and eating these same beasts is perfectly legal, as long as steps are taken to minimize suffering. So how can sexual contact be “cruelty” when the animals are enjoying it?
These pro-bestial arguments are disarming to any honest and consistent libertarian. Even Instapundit Glenn Reynolds allows that he’s “got nothing against” bestiality, explaining “since I’m happy to eat animals it’s hard for me to consider people having sex with them to be, you know, more exploitative.”
That’s because libertarianism is fundamentally wrong.
The worthiest argument against bestiality is not that it is “cruel,” nor that it is “exploitative.” It is that it is a violation of human dignity.
Bestiality is so very wrong not only because using animals sexually is abusive, but because such behavior is profoundly degrading and utterly subversive to the crucial understanding that human beings are unique, special, and of the highest moral worth in the known universe–a concept known as “human exceptionalism.”
Within the narrow blinders of libertarianism, laws can only be justified by appeal to an unconsenting victim. Human dignity has no place in the libertarian worldview, and the libertarian is left with no basis to outlaw what he calls “victimless crimes.” Prostitution, polygamy, pornography, incest, drug abuse, bestiality, and a host of other crimes, being consensual, must be legal, and that’s that.
And this is libertarianism’s greatest failing. The libertarians happen to come to the right conclusions on a great many issues of policy, and I am happy to ally with them on those issues. But libertarianism is not an adequate theory of governance.
I say, if you can’t think of any reason to “legislate morality,” then you should step aside and let someone with some common sense do the legislating. Michael McPhail’s dog says so, too.
UPDATE: Thanks for linking, Glenn. (I fixed a misspelling of your name in the title.)
FOLLOW-UP! After reading the comments to this post, you’ll definitely want to read “Sean answers the libertarians”!
Fantastic point and a great post, Sean. Libertarianism (and Randism) are indeed blinkered by their ideologies’ fundamental inability to consider innate human dignity.
I am totally unsuprised to see Peter Singer quoted in the Weekly Standard article, as well.
Of course things would be better under sharia where you can marry a goat and where sex with camels is common.
Sex with animals is not just a libertarian thing.
Violation of human dignity? When are they going to cancel “Big Brother”?
And how did the “Gong Show” last as long as it did?
The Duke of Wellington on Sex:
“The position is undignified, the expense ruinous and the pleasure only momentary.” -The Duke of Wellington
In defense of libertarianism, it does not actually say that bestiality is moral or ok (though randianism might). The point of libertarianism is that dealing with such moral issues using the club of the police action and the bureau of prisons exceeds the proper use of those tools and one should settle such moral issues without the club of the state. Thus it would be more accurate to say that libertarianism is inadequate as governance if you’ve already settled a priori the question of government as coercive morals enforcement. Libertarians would differ.
Now bestiality certainly can be outlawed in a libertarian regime. The grounds would be the public health issues of cross species STDs. This sort of thing is how we got gonorhea after all and *that* little cross species arrival is not a victimless crime. The libertarian defense of bestiality is one that is limited to libertarian libertines, a subset of libertarians and certainly not the entirety of the population.
You said:
“…human beings are… of the highest moral worth in the known universe.”
That is a potentiality perhaps. But it is factually untrue.
As proof, I cite the existence of Stalin, Mao, and Hitler; along with the millions who supported them; and the hundreds of lesser monsters (and their own supporters) who behaved in the same way.
well a little chicken [redacted by Gleeson] never did hurt nobody!
highest moral worth in the known universe
Thank goodness so much of it is unknown. If we’re the best there is, I feel sorry for the universe. Hopefully God got it right on a later effort out there somewhere.
To the main point: Doesn’t having to enforce dignity with guns sort of prove the point that it doesn’t inherently exist to begin with?
“You! Stop! You’re subverting your dignity by copulating with that dog!”
I’d say that there was no dignity there to subvert.
Too many terms going without a definition here…
“human dignity?” What’s that exactly?
You can’t declare something is wrong just because it hurts your feelings or makes people look bad. Calling bestiality a violation of human dignity sounds like you’re just saying that behavior is not “dignified.” I’m sure we wouldn’t have to look far for common, accepted behavior that was once considered as such, and is only now acceptable because of trivial cultural whim.
I would propose that it is a libertarian’s tendency to hold the individual as the ultimate value that serves as the strongest basis for a concept like “human dignity.” I have dignity because I am my highest value. If you can accept that, I think it somewhat contradicts the point of libertarianism being wrong because it doesn’t account for human dignity.
Hmmm, dignity vs. the freedom to be undignified. I know which side I’m on.
Dignity is in the eye of the beholder. Look, people are going to do all sorts of things you and I would deem disgusting (hey, all you women not wearing veils are lacking dignity to certain eyes). That doesn’t mean we need the criminal justice system involved. Simple disapproval is sufficient.
Not many libertarians would take the view you ascribe to them because most would believe that this “crime” is not “victimless.” Common conceptions of consent require that a dog or other animal cannot consent to sex with a human, since they don’t have the mental capacity to do so (nor the ability to communicate it). Therefore bestiality could easily still be illegal within a libertarian structure.
IMO: State moralists (people who belive moral behaviour can be explicitly enforced by the state) are misisng two things:
1. Moral behaviour enforced by the state is not moral behaviour; state enforcement is either through physical coercion, or the threat of physical coercion, and thus ammoral in my opinion. For example if some one put a gun to your head and made you commit an assault against another person, with the threat that if you didn’t both you and the victim would be killed, an otherwise immoral assault is in my opinion ammoral - neither moral or immoral. Or at best ambiguously moral (for either saving two lives, or for standing up despite the risk of life.) State coercion may not be as obvious, but its still imposed through physical force, and thus in my opinion should be limited by default. (And if you think about it, the nature of the justice system is reactive, presumably in part for this reason.)
2. Often I hear the usage of the slippery slop argument. But they assume the hill only goes downhill on oneside. There is clearly a slope on the other side, Sharia law being an example of where you can end up once legislation of moral values is accepted as the norm, and a plurality with morals that may be abhorent to a majority of the populace takes control.
wrt to this specific topic - I agree that there is room for libertarian support of this law, if the weight of the costs is higher than the weight of the benifit from not involving the state. Just as it’s okay for the state to force destruction of entire cattle herd that is at risk for mad cow disease - even if the individual farmer claims he would he all the meat himself.
hah - typo slippery slop(e) - oh well reads better that way given the topic…
What about sexbots? Would they subvert “human exceptionalism” as well?
“Violation of human dignity” is a vague and nonsensical basis on which to legislate. Any law, even the most tyrranical can be justified on such a basis.
Just law can only be based upon a clear and objective concept of individual rights.
For my money, Libertarianism is the one political philosophy that is truly consistent with human dignity because it is based squarely on the sovereignty of the individual. The fact that some individuals squander this sovereignty in foolish and counter-productive ways is simply proof that we live in an imperfect world — not an excuse for tyranny.
Well, as an apparent owner of an Arabic Beastality Blog, I’m totally against this.
That’ll be $29.95 please…
I don’t really know that you can prove that an animal enjoys the sex. It may be true in some instance, it may not in others. But since the animal can’t testify to the fact, and since I hardly believe any one wants someone to demonstrate the animal’s feelings on the matter in a court of law, I don’t know that that argument holds much weight.
Generally speaking, most female animals at least are not keen on sex. And, of course, there is the matter of disease.
But the line of argument proposed here: that you can’t have sex with animals because it violates the greater human dignity.
That assumes that humans are more dignified than animals. Don’t know about you, but the odds of finding a dog with an honest, congenial and kind nature are probably better than finding a human with the same.
If there is a greater human dignity (I think humans are vastly more interesting, but that’s because we have intelligences that both make us more interesting and perceive the difference — to a dog, dogs may very well be more interesting), can one not argue that a belief in superstition is an assault on that dignity. Superstition is a nearly universal ailment.
Wasn’t it Twain who said, “Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
At age 13, I came across my dad’s field manual of court martial.
All was quite sober and lawyerly until arriving at the section on beastiality. As if to say it would be absurd to think an American would ever be so charged, a British soldier charged with raping an ostrich during the Boer War was quoted as saying,
“If I’d known they was going to raise such a bloody fuss, I’d've married the bloody bird.”
So who gets to decide when “human dignity” is violated?
I am a Libertarian on national issues but conservative on local issues. I think laws should only be made at the closest to local level as is possible. I don’t want gambling outlawed in Las Vegas but I don’t want it legal in my city either. I would not want to live in (or visit) a city or state where bestiality was a recruiting tool for the Chamber of Commerce but that does not mean that I want the Fed’s making morality based laws.
Incest is most certainly not a victimless crime. The victims may be unaware of the damage but it is in a whole different class from say drug use or prostitution.
Am I wrong in guessing that Mr. Gleeson would not be unhappy with a Congress full of Evangelicals legislating public morality?
As a libertarian, and Christian, I can definitely back up what other libertarians above have stated. It’s not an issue of whether bestiality is moral or right; it’s a question of whether we need the police involved in making sure nobody has sex with animals. Our current war on drugs is now spilling over into a “war on anybody who isn’t a cop”, we don’t need more laws.
We currently have the highest incarceration rate of the first world because of our silly drug laws. It hurts our economy (yes, it could be even better) and hurts our society. Libertarianism is the answer to this. And, it’s the only true Christian way.
I find it interesting that fellow Christians complain about Islam being spread by the sword, yet they have no qualms of doing the same with their own religion.
I say, if you can’t think of any reason to “legislate morality,” then you should step aside and let someone with some common sense do the legislating.
The problem is, usually the people so anxious to legislate morality don’t have any common sense. Or morals.
Purely out of philosophical curiousity, isn’t it also possible to construct an argument FOR beastiality on grounds of human exceptionalism? A sketch of the argument (which I am not advancing, to be clear, but only arguing for the simple joy of philosophy):
A human may not use a human for sexual gratification without the other human’s consent; this is because they are moral equals. For the same reason, a human may not eat another human (even with consent, usually).
Animals are not the equals of humans. Therefore, we do not require their consent in using them to fill our own needs. Just as we have no problem with eating a cow or a chicken if we wish, so too, if you were the sort of person who wished, you might… you see where this is going.
In a really funny interview, Dave Barry lamented that the first argument he always heard against being a libertarian was that in a free society, "everyone would have sex with dogs." Among other funny stuff, he said:
He was right! Just so all of you can think less of me, I have no problem legalizing prostitution, polygamy,pornography, incest, drug abuse, and bestiality involving consenting adults (kids, who by definition are not legally capable of making adult decisions, are a different legal matter). Here for example is my rant on legalizing prostitution. Here is my favorite ode to Polygamy. Here is my summary post on letting individuals run their own damn life.
When people come to tell you that it is OK for them to use coercion and force against you, but only to protect you from yourself, or even more nebulously to protect your "human dignity," run away screaming. Here is a bet: Give me absolute dictatorial powers but limited only to things I could justify as "protecting human dignity" and I would have a full-bore fascist state built by the end of the week. Because that phrase can freaking mean anything at all. And it is always, always, always the person who makes such statements who envisions themselves (not you our me!) defining the terms.
I am not sure what my "dignity" is or where it rests, but please, as long as I am not hurting anyone else, leave the protection of it to me alone.
Your argument is unconvincing to those of us who feel that having “no basis” to pass law after law is a feature rather than a bug, but it made me laugh and it made me think.
You also treated your libertarian audience with dignity; you made the honest case for libertarianism straight-up, no straw men and no exaggeration, before you shot it down. I really respect that.
Thanks.
Laika:
This is because Sean used to be a libertarian in his days as a student and for some years thereafter. He advocated totally straight faced (and I kid you not) that every road be privatized - even if that meant toll gates at every corner, it was the right thing to do by his libertarian principles.
Dave Barry was Right about Having Sex with Dogs
In a really funny interview, Dave Barry lamented that the first argument he always heard against being a libertarian was that in a free society, everyone would have sex with dogs. Among other funny stuff, he said:I got a few
You forget that the worst possible affront to someone’s dignity is to try and force their mind or usurp their body.
That is to say, you can validly preach non-whoring, but you can’t validly legislate it - because the very usurpation inherent in legislating a victimless crime is always worse than the deed itself.
All of you — okay, most of you — raised good points and posed relevant questions. I thank you. Sorry I couldn’t reply individually to each, but I’ve tried to respond to all of you at once, with today’s post, SEAN ANSWERS THE LIBERTARIANS. Feel free to continue the discussion over there.
Whose dignity? The person committing the act? You or I would consider that an abuse of our dignity, but the person doing it obviously doesn’t (or enjoys being degraded; those sorts exist, after all).
If you’re taking the “one person doing it degrades us all” angle, well, an atheist would consider the act of a human worshipping an imaginary being (his opinion, not mine) to be degrading. A Marxist would consider a worker selling his labor to an employer to be degrading. Radical feminists consider the institution of marriage to be degrading. Shall we outlaw religion, employment, and marriage?
I will grant that libertarianism is a bit squishy when it comes to matters of animals. Obviously (to me) they can’t be afforded the same rights as humans, but then I’m not comfortable with them having no more legal status than furniture. Yet if it’s legal to kill them, skin them, cook and eat them, or put their heads on display above your fireplace, I don’t see any logical limit against what you can do with them.
Mind you, that assumes you’re talking about animals that you own. If anyone tried something like that with my pets, they’d get the Lorena Bobbit treatment from me, and worse.
You can’t legislate morality. It’s consensual. A victimless crime. Problem with all of those is what’s consent. What’s a victim? what’s harm? It’s all negotiable.
Take consentual cannibalism. If someone eats someone who gives their consent before hand (like the instance in Germany) then is it ok? The person did give consent, but clearly when you take chunks out of someone and eat them you are doing harm to that person. Is he then a victim? And define consent. If you speak to a crazy person and he gives you consent to eat him, does the fact that he’s crazy mean that he’s given his consent or do you take someone’s state of mind into account. For example, most people wouldn’t find it to be very rational to consent to someone eating you,but what if you do give consent? If you’re clearly insane, then your consent is not necessarily a given, even if you say yes.
Or how about if I beat my wife. She doesn’t say no when I hit her and she stays with me, therefore is there anything wrong with wife beating? She’s an adult, she didn’t not give me consent, her staying with me means she’s willing to live with my abuse, therefore did I do anything wrong.
Even the idea that its ok to do anything with adults as long as its consesual, but its wrong when you apply the same logic with kids is simlilarly negotiable, because what is a kid? Is it a 12 year old, a 13 year old, a 14 year old? That has to be defined by society in the first place (and differs from place to place), which requires legislating morality as it were, to come up with a definable age whereby one becomes an adult and behaving in certain manners towards children is either appropriate or innapropriate. If you say that you can’t legislate morality, then deciding between the appropriateness of behavior in regards to children would similarly be off base.
Otherwise, you can legislate morality. And if you are applying a standard towards how you act with children, it implies a baseline standard of right or wrong (otherwise why make a distinction in the first place).
I don’t see where Glenn Reynolds was a major or even necessary part of this post. You just included it just to get an instalanche, didn’t you? Shame!
Shhh. Don’t tell, okay?
jr565-
Legally I think we can draw a distinction between adults and children, e.g. voting age, draft age, drinking age, age of consent. We’d probably be better off if we just picked one age, but I’m a libertartian and don’t support NAMBLA.
Secondly I think it is proper for goverment to enforce certain boundaries, typically along the lines of Life, Liberty, and Property (original Decl. of Indep.) - you cannot sell yourself into slavery or as a meal. The contract that does so is invalid, and thus not protection against law enforcement IMO.
ANIMAL ABUSE
There is a level of perversion that is considered sick and disgusting to even the more jaded leftist radicals, for now. Most things that ordinary folk find nasty or wrong many on the left are willing to apologize for but there still is a line, even for…
Unfortunately, you’re argument is even more fundamentally flawed than that of the libertarians.
I could see you going two ways with this (you choose neither)
That we are morally superior and should not use animals (by this logic the meat industry and all it’s practices should be illegal as well)
or
that we are morall superior and have every right to use animals (for meat, and also, for sexual purposes).
You choose neither. Instead, you choose to side with some sort of non-existent middle ground that both allows for general animal use, excluding that of a sexual nature. I don’t know how our status as the dominant species justifies such hypocritical and selective thinking.
Call me when you graduate above the thinking level of the libertarians.
“there is the matter of disease.”
Thought I’d add, you’re far more likely to get a disease from a human than an animal, because most diseases are species specific. Just FYI.
“Generally speaking, most female animals at least are not keen on sex.”
I take it you’ve never seen a female animal in heat… That is completely untrue.
At any rate, we may not be able to prove that the animal ENJOYS sex, but we can definently prove beyond reasonable doubt when they are NOT enjoying sex. In this case, we have an eyewitness account. By nature, I’m assuming most bestiality charges will involve an eye witness. The eye witness in this case described the dog as “in pain and crying.” I think that’s all we need to tell this was not consensual and this guy needs to be locked up.
However, the Washington bestiality law makes no exception for consensual relationships. You’re a class C felon, no matter what. No exceptions.
Is it really that crazy to meerly ask for a distinction between those two things? I mean couldn’t they at the very least offer a lesser penalty for those instances where abuse is not clearly implied? Is it really that crazy to actually take some time and think about this law, and allow for those instances, rather than doing knee-jerk legislation? I mean, come on. Legislators should be required to think a little. It’s good for them.
Take the case that sponsored this law for example: It was a male horse that killed a human male ON THE RECEIVING END. If that guy was alive, I still have to ask, who would they charge? The horse or the man? Because if you ask me, it clearly wasn’t the horse that was getting raped. If anything, he was enjoying it.
R-T-B: “Instead, you choose to side with some sort of non-existent middle ground that both allows for general animal use, excluding that of a sexual nature.”
I’ll admit it’s a middle ground, situated between two extreme positions. But I would hardly call it a non-existent middle ground. It is, in truth, where most of us are happy to live.
I am at least glad to see someone finally surface here with the courage to defend bestiality on its own supposed merits, rather than resorting to rigid ideology and slippery-slope-ism.
It’s a nonexistent middle ground by the logic you use. I’ll admit it’s certainly not nonexistent to the general public, but it is nonexistent following logical methods. No one ever said the general public is logical, but I’d hope they at least attempt to be.
Also, I find your other definition of human exceptionism (that everything we do to humans isn’t ok to do to animals, and vice versa as shown by your table) to be quite disturbing. By that definition, these are mutally exclusive properties. Nothing can be wrong for both humans and animals, and nothing can be right for both humans and animals. It’s ok to love people by that logic, but not to love animals (I refer to emotional love mind you, not sexual. I am a pet owner). Also, the federal government recently passed a bill regarding the care of lab rodents in which it basicly said autopsies could not be done without first killing the animal (something that suprisingly was not being followed). By your logic, now that this is wrong with animals, it’s ok with humans.
So by your logic, it’s not ok to love pets as companions, and it’s ok to do certain terrible heinous actions to humans. I’m sorry, but I’ll side with the libertarians over that any day. While your views of the morality bestiality may be common place (due to what I would call a failure in logic), your radical views of human exceptionalism are not. I certainly don’t think that way, and judging by the responses and people I know, I’d venture to say few do.
I’d also like to add I’m not a libertarian and don’t identify myself as such. I have some things in common with them on the social spectrum, but I overall consider them mostly to be “loons,” with no offense intended.
My basic point was that if you are going to use such a radical definition of human exceptionalism, you are going to have to follow it through to it’s radical conclusions if you want to retain a logical outlook. Pick one or the other, not a middleground which by your self-proclaimed logic, does not exist.
The table to which you refer was not a “definition” of human exceptionalism; it was an illustration involving three discrete behaviors, in response to a comment about those behaviors. Nor would I ever have made the ridiculous claim you are attributing to me, that “Nothing can be wrong for both humans and animals, and nothing can be right for both humans and animals.” Other than that, I agree with your easily achieved refutation of this argument which nobody made.
Oh, I see. You must forgive me. I attributed more radicalism to you than you perhaps deserved. I’m not afraid to admit when I am mistaken.
I thought you were describing the treatment of animals and humans as mutually exclusive (I think that’s the term). Upon further reading of the context, I see that that is not the case.
I appreciate the clarification.
I forgive you. I’m glad we cleared that up.
Thanks. Sometimes I can get a bit carried away with my assumptions.
Perhaps we can agree on the point that our law (Washingtons) as it stands could use some distinction between degrees of abuse? I mean, that seems like a good healthy middle-ground if nothing else.
As for this latest case… I say there is no question. Throw the book at him.
I will certainly agree, that an offense that causes pain or injury should be punished more harshly than one that does not. A legal dinstinction between ‘bestiality’ and ‘aggravated bestiality’ is called for. And if the newspaper accounts of Mr. McPhail’s offense are accurate, he would definitely be guilty of the latter.
(I have to go teach one of my evening classes now. If you, or anyone, comments tonight and I don’t reply until tomorrow, I am not snubbing you.)
That’s pretty much what I was getting at. While I personally don’t see anything wrong with bestiality that is not forced (and personally wouldn’t require a law for that), I certainly wouldn’t be too upset seeing a distinction in which “Bestiality” and “Aggrevated Bestiality” are seperated, with the latter being a felony, and the former being something far lesser, like a misdemeanor.
That’ll probably never happen, but it certainly would be a step forward.
It seems as though those who somehow fear liberty and feel that the government must play “Big Brother” to its citizenry find the most obscure and absurd incidences in attempts to prove Libertarianism as fundamentally wrong mainly by inciting fear in an uninformed public. As ‘Jan L.’ pointed out in a comment above, most Libertarians would not see beastiality as a victimless crime because acts of liberty involves actions between consenting adult persons, and an animal is not a person and cannot consent.
Laws protecting minors and animals, not by the way putting them in the same category except for this purpose, would continue to exist. This is because neither is at a level where they can reasonably consent to or defend themselves from any action taken upon their person. Libertarians take a stand against victimless crimes, where the only crime is against the state, as in John Doe vs The State of Washington. The state suffers no loss of life or liberty and is not a person to be regarded with the rights of a citizen; only in cases of property damage against state property such as a government building would there be a rare crime against ‘the state’.
Most Libertarians are moral and upstanding citizens who simply love freedom, and further trust their fellow man and woman who they see everyday instead of a government chock full of officials who we never see. It is lack of communication between neighbors that has bred distrust of our neighbors and has led us to this type of ‘Big Brother’ state and mentality now existent. An obscure group of ‘libertines’, who in all my years as a Libertarian I have never met, in no way reflect the views of most Libertarians.
Howdy Adeeb, thank you for commenting. Since you are the press secretary for the Libertarian Party, your words have considerable weight as representing a genuine libertarian position. My problem with your “consent” rationale for banning bestiality, is that animals are not persons; they are property.
Libertarianism, I thought, was about permitting maximum autonomy to each person, and only banning acts which infringe some other person’s rights. Could you tell me, is this summary essentially correct?
And if so, can you tell me whose rights are infringed when a person takes indecent liberties with an animal he owns? Are you ascribing rights to the animal?
If you are positing rights for the animal, what rights does the animal have, exactly? (Presumably, if it has the right to withhold its consent to sex, it must have some other rights as well.) And do all animals have the same rights? Even bees? And do plants have rights, or only humans and animals? And do rocks have rights, or only living things?
These questions are not facetious. I believe that a law against bestiality derives its legitimacy from the people’s right to make laws upholding decency, and it does not involve any rights of any animals. But if you are grounding your disapproval on the lack of the beast’s consent, these are questions which naturally follow from your philosophy.
A couple of years ago, AFF ran an interesting piece on the topic of animal rights. It seems from careful reasoning that a libertarian philosophy can go two directions: legalize animal cruelty, or invent a regime of animal rights to justify outlawing animal cruelty. Is that the case?
Greetings Sean, good to meet your acquaintance. The answer to this is simple. Libertarians pride themselves on the Party of Principle, meaning first and foremost we are diametrically opposed to the use force to achieve our goals. Therefore, if one’s “goal” is to have sex, then this sexual act with anyone must be consensual by the very principle of the party. Any party unable to give consent: a minor, a clearly mentally incompetent person, a mentally retarded person, or an animal would not be able to give consent for the lack of mental capacity to do so. Having sex with such formentioned persons and beings would therefore be a violation of principle. Further, to let an incompetent person or an animal out for hire to perform sexual acts would also be a circumvention of the very same principle. Force is force, regardless of whether it is against a person or animal.
There is a danger in passing laws upholding decency, because one persons decency is not anothers, and may even be another persons indecency. For example, polygamy is seen as not only lawful but decent in direct opposition to monogamy in many Eastern cultures and nations and even a few Western cultures. Polygamy is seen by many as a divinely prescribed cure for the ills of licentiousness by eliminating the need for a woman to prostitute herself to earn money for food, shelter, and clothing. While we may not agree with that, some do, and those that don’t agree with it shouldn’t be forced to follow it; likewise those that do agree with it should be left to practice their belief.
We live in a country where in the past half century people have been convicted of whistling at women because it was considered indecent. I dare say most Americans don’t want to go back to state enforced morality for the sake of eliminating isolated acts such as bestiality, because even those who actually support certain moral codes will find fault with other moral codes. This country was founded as ‘The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave’, so let us preserve freedom and be brave enough to trust one another rather than using the state as a watchdog.
When a Libertarian favors bestiality, he creates a slippery slop indeed.
“Any party unable to give consent: a minor, a clearly mentally incompetent person, a mentally retarded person, or an animal would not be able to give consent for the lack of mental capacity to do so.”
You can not honestly lump animals in that group. We eat animals. We don’t eat mentally retarded people or children. Animals are neither of those.
And besides, why can an animal not give consent? It seems they are more than capable of kicking ones butt to say “No.” They communicate using the language of physical force. If anything, this form of consent is CLEARER than the human form.
At the same time, you could argue an animal does not know what it is consenting to. But why does it need too? It won’t get pregnant from such contact, it won’t get STD’s… Indeed, all the reasons that humans require sexual understanding are not even present in a bestial relationship, making that argument false.
Also, you have to make a decision as a libertarian: Either animals are raised for consumption and use, in which case they are property and can be used without regard to consent, or they are protected in which case all this is illegal.
I wonder how you would feel about artificial insemination, a currently legal practice? It’s certainly a form of animal rape… Why is it legal and bestiality not? Is it solely because it produces extra meat? Is that how we judge the world of animal ethics these days?
I’m glad I’m not Libertarian, because using your extremist logic, one has to side with a radical conclusion. I’m quite comfortable with current ethics of society, in which animals may be used as long as excessive pain is not caused in the process. Rape indeed falls under that catagory, but as outlined above quite adequately, there is no way you could call all bestiality rape.
As for the slippery slope logic, that is a bad arguement. We don’t illegalize something because it will lead to something else. We illegalize something because it’s wrong, and as far as bestiality is concerned when using societies current common ethics and logic, we can not possibly call it “wrong” without commiting major moral hypocricy. It really is that simple.
No, I really meant it when I said a slippery slop results from bestiality. Ask a Libertarian.
Doesn’t matter. We don’t illegalize things because of slippery slopes. We illegalize things because they are wrong.
Man, are you thick! Forget it.
I’m really not trying to be. It seems to me you are arguing it should be illegal because otherwise it will lead to a cascade of bad legalizations (hench the slippery slope logic). If I’m misinterpeting you you’ll have to honestly forgive me, it’s not intentional. My point was/is that slipperly slope logic is not a good arguement against something in the legal sense. It won’t slide down a hill and legalize the next step just because it can, it still has to go through due process and be approved by the courts and legislature. It’s not like pedophilia is next, as the two are not comparable.
Again, you’ll have to forgive me if I’m entirely misinterpeting you, which is probably likely. I guess the point is simply not so apparent to me as it is to you.
Don’t mean to interrupt, but I believe Kevin was attempting nothing more than a pun. “Slop,” not “slope.” The humor would have resulted from the meaning of “slop,” and its application to a sex act.
oh dude, I feel like such a moron.
Thanks.
That’s right, Sean. It’s a slippery slop not fit for man or beast.
I get it now… Disagree, but get it.