02-25-2018, 12:31 PM
This is a re-post from the archive. Originally written by SEM and published on my old Zoo Web Page.
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Ethics and Zoophilia
By SEM
Editor'd note: This Essay originally appeared in the news group talk.politics.animals during debate concerning animal rights and humans who are attracted sexually to animals. It is posted with the permisison of the author.
Religion, by nature, is both subjective and exclusive (the our sect is special because we're the only one that understands the true nature of things and everone else is damned" syndrome). As religious and cultural taboos vary from culture to culture, we cannot use them as a basis for determining right and wrong. The litmus test I'd choose to use is "harm", with the sole exception of harming oneself (the freedom of self-determination cannot exist if the ability to self-destruct is revoked).
Murder harms another person. Rape harms another person. Theft harms another person. Assault and battery harms others. Psychological abuse harms. Drunken driving has great potential to harm other people. These offenses have distinct and identifiable victims and perpetrators, the exact nature of the harm done is often readily apparent (due to the victim often being intentionally targeted, or even an innocent bystander).
But, does just *being* drunk hurt others? Does merely getting high on marijuana harm anyone? Does soliciting prostitution harm? (John Stossel of ABC's "20/20" did a couple of thought-provoking stories on these topics). Does engaging in sexual intercourse with a member of the same gender (or members of another species) harm anyone? Or are they "victimless" crimes? Can gods (of a religiously diverse country) be victims of any indignities against their honor? I must maintain that they are not; how can a god be named a victim if nobody can even reach a consensus on the nature of that god?
Can society be victimized? Yes, it can, when some people decide to go against the majority and decide to violate its laws and customs. Society is definitely harmed when scofflaws stir unrest. Murders and thefts cause distress and disrupt harmony as individuals seek to exact revenge over wrongs having been committed. On a brief sidenote, the ancient Athenian king Drako is not the ruthless villain the words associated with his name ("draconian") often seem to imply; he actually came to the *rescue* of his society by codifying the laws and punishments, and getting the government involved in meting out justice, especially in murder cases such that the cycle of feuding and revenge would stop (ideally) with the deaths of only the victim and perpetrator. Without the institution of society (through the government it administers) setting itself up as a "victim by proxy", the vicious cycle of revenge/avenging gets out of control.
But all too often society sets itself up for an inappropriate victimhood...the civil disobediences perpetrated by women and blacks in the US victimized society. How does that happen? The people who compose society overstep their bounds and stop minding their own business. They blind themselves to the reality that their only basis for denying rights to some eligible classes are generally unsupported by any semblance of reason. They begin pushing subjective legislation around that has nothing to do with enforcing the purpose of the government in a free society: to keep people from harming each other. The government ceases to be merely a victim by proxy, it becomes a full-fledged victim when that happens.
So, what's wrong with the government becoming a victim in and of itself? Easy...freedoms are trampled underfoot. To an extreme, the government and its rulers suppress dissent and any other freedoms it deems harmful to itself (hot issue recently was burning of the US flag; elsewhere, such as in China, political prisoners continue to rot in prison because they espoused democracy and thus victimized the socialist regime running society).
The rule of thumb isn't a hard concept. All the people need to do is arrange a government that basically maintains order and security. It most properly accomplishes this by: (1) setting itself up as a victim by-proxy *only* for other beings (i.e., it cannot represent itself as a victim) (2) recognizing as victims only sentient beings whose existence is universally acknowledged-- physically present animals (including humans). This means no gods or subjective religious dogma should be a factor. The reason for this being that there are many gods around that often have conflicting agendas, which will bring their respective followers into bitter conflict (whether they exist or not). It's not up to society to determine which God (or god) is the correct one, that's too subjective and difficult to do without setting up a state-run church. Only when some god or another steps forward and indisputably claims damages should the government defend that entity. Note: the freedom to worship (without infringing upon rights of others) can be disrupted, and in such a case there *is* a victim: the ego of the god is irrelevant, but the worshipper would clearly have been wronged.
This is all ideal. When society can't even arrive at a general consensus on which organisms deserve the status of personhood, everything will continue to be shaken up and society will continue to evolve. Today, blacks and natives are considered to be people with rights, not livestock as they were seemingly treated in generations past. Perhaps in the future, mammals (and other animals) will be considered to hold full rights, and folks will look back at the ways we treat and use livestock today and call us unenlightened barbarians. To seemingly be decided in the near future is even the status of fetal humans; as things stand now in the US, pre-birth humans have no rights until they're born alive (even at stages where they have highly developed brains and modern medicine is able to sustain their lives independent of the mother).
However, (this is the suggestion) we can make things more ideal by at least resolving some of the more obvious issues: decriminalizing the crimes objectively determined to be "victimless". We need to distinguish the subjective "wrongs in our own minds" from *real* wrongs.
Homosexual relationships between two consenting adults seem to be exclusively a wrongs in many people's minds (and against the dignities of their God), yet not a *real* wrong against society at large, because it victimizes no individuals.
A weird case: pedophilia between adult men and boys used to be an accepted rite of passage in ancient Greece (this is definitely *not* a defense of pedophilia as I'll point out later on, it is just the way things were). In their society it seems that fathers had great cultural difficulty in expressing any sort of affection for their own sons (excessive doting was socially unacceptable), so they took on the sons of others as proteges/lovers. There was no stigma attached, and the protege generally stood to benefit by gaining a mentor who would aid him in rising through the ranks. Both benefitted, the youth receiving affection (I cannot fathom this situation not being harmful in some ways, such as the sexuality thrust upon a sexually immature person, but I must reserve judgement because I did not live in that society), the mentor from being able to express affection. But that situation has changed. The widely-held views of society today makes that type of relationship a crime. The stigma attached to the act reflect negatively on both the victims and perpetrators of pedophilia. That situation results in psychological harm in this society and cannot be tolerated until the harm stops (*if* it ever disappears). However, the question is, is pedophilia a wrong in my mind and almost everyone else's, something subjective that we learned, or is it a *real* wrong that society has realized and corrected?
As for bestiality...the point is largely moot. Can harm be committed against a creature that has no real rights? Humans choose not to bestow the "right to life" on animals, we don't require their consent to kill them. Nor do we require their informed consent to domesticate and train them to work for us. We often circumvent and suppress their wills in compelling them to bear young, either via restraint or artificial insemination. But this issue is more complex than just animals not having many rights though, since we do seem to grant them the right to a life without excessive misery and pain. It all boils down to whether animals suffer from having sex with humans, either physically or psychologically. Unless beaten or otherwise bullied or restrained into submission, I fully believe that animals are indeed able to consent (or not consent) to just about anything...sometimes my horses run away when I pull out the saddle because they don't feel like being ridden. It used to take a great deal of persistence, patience, and persuasion to get them to consent to taking their dewormer pastes (I don't believe in using force or physical restraints to "persuade" them to do *anything*, with the sole exception of keeping them fenced in). And it is well known that horses will sometimes kick if they don't consent to something invading their space. Breeding hobbles are used to prevent mares from acting out their dissent to being bred in the form of kicking out at the stud; if they weren't able to resist, the hobbles wouldn't be necessary. And dogs bite (just try touching the bone of a possessive dog without its consent). Pretty much all animals have defenses and the capability to physically resist or at least make known their objections.
So, I guess I must reserve judgement on this issue. Hmmm...with one exception. It does really seem like animals *can* be psychologically damaged if they *don't* consent to sex (or even physically, someone on another board related the story of a mare fighting being bred to the degree that, even though restrained in breeding hobbles and doped up on tranquilizers, she flipped over backwards and broke her back). And certainly young (sexually immature) animals have great potential to be harmed by any sort of sexual relations; my sister's Lab bitch just experienced her first heat recently...the bitch was definitely not ready by the accounts my sister gave, she resisted and fled from all potential suitors instead of consenting to mate with them. To force the dog to breed in that state of mind would almost certainly seem to cause great harm. I'm just glad that the dog wasn't ready...I hope her owners demonstrate their responsibility soon, I highly doubt that they'll be able to intercept the girl in time when she decides she *does* want to take on a suitor(s).
At the very least, it would be wise to compare bestialists' rights with the rights of animal exploiters in general. If we try to set a precedent that animals have actual rights, would it not be an obvious violation of a right even more fundamental than to refuse sexual advances, the right to simply live? I'd hate to be a hypocrite to condemn one form of possible use and abuse while committing another more blatant form...
I also do not know about it "being wrong anywhere I go". For what stories and rumors are worth, Bedouins are said to often be a bit too fond of their horses and camels. Residents of Nebraska (more specifically, the Cornhuskers football team, hehe) are also said to be a bit too fond of cattle. And jokes abound in regards to Scotsmen and their sheep, would these jokes be popular at all if there wasn't a hint of possible reality in them? Back a few years, it seemed that many religions at least tolerated bestiality; there are many Greco-Roman myths in which a god seduced a maiden by assuming the form of an attractive animal (and one case that I know of where a mortal woman, Pasiphae wife of king Minos, was stricken with amours for a bull and begot the Minotaur). With stories like that, and depictions of bestiality in their wall paintings, it seems that those cultures just didn't have a problem with it.
By SEM.
