My friend's argument against homosexuality is that yes, people can be born with a natural affinity towards homosexuality but the same can be said of incest and bestiality and that doesn't make them any less "wrong", it's just society decided to place stigma around incest and bestiality whereas society is now deciding to take away the stigma from homosexuality but they're still along the same lines of sexual deviancy.
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I used to play Skyrim but then I took a patch to the knee.
But seriously, incest is taboo because it leads to harmful genetic traits. Maybe something about conflicting with the assumed non-sexual family relationships as well.
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From: paperwarior | #005 But seriously, incest is taboo because it leads to harmful genetic traits. Maybe something about conflicting with the assumed non-sexual family relationships as well.
This. Beastality I don't even want to think about.
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Your friend is absolutely right about homosexual marriage being equal to sibling marriage. Beastiality he is wrong about since the animals cannot consent.
There really isn't a good reason against consenting adult incest, since we can now screen for the kinds of horrible recessive diseases that long-term reduction in the gene pool can create.
I mean, most people are going to think it's icky, but babies born from incest won't automatically be deformed or diseased, like a lot of people seem to think.
Obviously any kind of incest with minors is a completely different story.
difficulty only exists among those closely related. if you're once removed then the chance is barely greater than normal. first cousins also aren't really at a bigger risk - 4% higher than the norm, and 2nd cousins cut it down to 2%.
there isn't much against incest between two consenting adults, but incest is also the least comparable of them all. homosexuality is a sexual orientation. beastiality, if you have some attraction to a creature, you might be able to weasel an excuse in. but incest doesn't have anything going for it like that - if you're attracted to someone then being related isn't really a qualifier. it might make things more spicy if you're into that taboo, or it might make you gain a bit more attraction because of it, but it doesn't actually do anything in and of itself. it's basically a fetish. so while you might gain some attraction to people of the same sex or a horse on the basis of them being the same sex or them being a horse, 'sister' doesn't really amount to anything. if you're attracted to women and one is your sister it doesn't change that the main attraction, and reason it's your sister, is because you're attracted to women in the first place. to one line it: incest isn't a sexual orientation. homosexuality is.
beastiality simply runs through the matter that animals can't consent. you can argue it due to lack of proper brain functions to how we define consent, but end of the day, they can't. it's basically rape.
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The King Wang. Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.
Forgetting about the sexual aspect for a second, there is no difference between same-sex marriage and sibling marriage. Both were considered "icky" for many years...and recently, for some reason, one of them escaped that stigma. But other than that, there is no difference.
How is an animal incapable of consenting? I'm pretty sure it knows whats going down when it gains the red rocket and jumps on a girl's butt.
Eh... But it doesn't really know because it's not sentient. It's like how even if a child isn't forced to have sex, it's still molestation. You could argue that an animal giving sex isn't harmful to it, but it could be harmful to the human, like that guy who died by... you know.
There's also a whole bunch of health risks that can arise from humping a guy in the butt.
Yes, but sexual health risks are a given during any sex, (I'd guess anal is more risky than vaginal, but oral is less) and you can take precautions against them. One incest baby might not be so bad, but if you have a long line of people that only have sex with each other, like European royalty back in the day, they start to get really screwed up. And yeah, gay/infertile incest. I still think that it could be harmful socially, but that might just be my prejudice.
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also if he wants to argue sexual devience then fact is we've allowed quite a lot of it. if you have a foot fetish, you're fine. if you have a bondage fetish, you're fine. s&m, fine. as long as it involves two consenting adults you're mostly fine - even choking the other person is a'okay.
so there ain't much rationale behind homosexuality under that umbrella being 'wrong.' most of it's been accepted as something that people can do if they want. homosexuality just takes it a good mile ahead because it's not 'an affinity' that makes it, but an attraction to one and not the other, which makes it an extremely distinguishable trait. sure you can be bi, but that doesn't eliminate the portion who are simply just gay. as a fetish/affinity deal, it's fine. as an issue with heterosexuality vs. homosexuality, the former's fine so the latter should be as well as they're both working on the exact same platforms.
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The King Wang. Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.
There really isn't a good reason against consenting adult incest, since we can now screen for the kinds of horrible recessive diseases that long-term reduction in the gene pool can create.
I mean, most people are going to think it's icky, but babies born from incest won't automatically be deformed or diseased, like a lot of people seem to think.
Obviously any kind of incest with minors is a completely different story.
This post pretty much sums up everything that needs to be said on the incest side of things. There are biological reasons why most of us have such an aversion to it, but that doesn't mean we need to legislate it.
And note that there are no laws in place otherwise to prevent children being born from genetic defects. We don't make it illegal for, e.g., two people with hemophilia in their family backgrounds to marry, even though they too have an increased chance of "diseased" offspring.
Bestiality has some issues surrounding consent, so it's a bit different.
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yeah, the biggest issue with incest is social. likewise though, the least comparable is incest because everything in it, including the offenders, is social.
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The King Wang. Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.
One big difference is that no one wants to have incestual or beastial sex. People want to have gay sex. This usually comes up in gay marriage slippery slope arguments. If you legalized all three for marriage tomorrow, there'd be a ton of people getting married to people of their own gender but basically no one getting married to their sister or dog.
As for the moral question there's nothing wrong with incest. Beastiality is animal abuse based on laws of consent we already have established (and are really quite conservative, honestly 16 year olds are probably entirely capable of giving informed consent for sex).
also in most states 16+ is perfectly fine. hell i don't think there's any state that doesn't have provisions regarding 16 year olds (e.g., up to X is fine), but a good majority of 'em are okay with the age of consent being that number. very few are actually 18.
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The King Wang. Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.
Incest between siblings or cousins of similar ages and maturity levels doesn't strike me as morally reprehensible, but it does strike me as a markedly bad idea in lots of cases. It is unlikely the two will choose to maintain their sexual relationship forever, and it is likely to make things awkward when it's over. I wouldn't think any less of someone who had such a relationship, but I would be surprised and expect it not to end well.
Pregnancy as a result of incest would also make it a bad idea, but, of course, protection, if used with proper care, has a failure rate so low as to be negligible.
I personally feel incest between parent and child (uncle-nephew, etc) is wrong (even if the child's above the age of consent) because it confuses parental roles and fundamentally changes a relationship that otherwise would be based on safety and familial love. I feel it would have the strong potential to completely remove the older person as a father figure or mother figure for the child, if not handled very delicately. In addition, it seems like it could possibly give them confused ideas about sex in society (i.e., not to use the "slippery slope" too hard, but it honestly might be difficult to explain why it's "okay" to have sex with your mother but not with your high school teacher or your supervisor or boss). Especially if the child is young, it strikes me as wrong because if the child regrets it and feels the older person took advantage of them, it could be a life-changing experience and probably traumatic to most. This might be more of a comment on "our society" than on it being "inherently" wrong, but I just think it's so majorly dangerous that it isn't worth it. After thinking about it just now, I GUESS I can see it being "okay" if the child is "old enough to handle it" - but 18 doesn't seem like the right age to me. More like 22-25-ish. I feel like they'd really need to be a mature and not-too-impressionable individual.
Theoretically, if we lived in a society where everyone just had sex with everyone (parents, siblings, bosses, etc), then it absolutely wouldn't be as bad. But if it creates a strong discord between the child's individual experiences and the expectations of society? This creates a lot of stress, and especially if they were young and impressionable and later changed their minds about it, it's something they'd have to live with forever and probably be ashamed of. If they can manage to embrace it and live a normal life, well, great, but I feel like that's a rare exception.
Beastiality, in the case of an animal NOT being physically forced into anything, strikes me as an act that the animal can in fact consent to. I do not condone anything involving forcing oneself on an animal, and unless the animal initiates the sex, it's pretty much abuse. It's much easier to see in the case of a male animal, for obvious reasons, but there are probably clear physical signs in some female animals expressing desires as well. Desire, of course, isn't the same as consent, so to me that's a gray area... but a male animal jumping on somebody and initiating it? Doesn't sound like animal abuse to me. Sounds like a bit of a double standard with male vs female animals, but it's just a lot easier to argue in favor of the male animal.
Training a pet to have sex with its owner could give rise to complications when visitors are over. Just having a pet that isn't neutered is tough for those reasons. It'd need to be trained very well not to hump everything in sight, and really, unless they're really really well trained, they're pretty much gonna do what they want. Don't keep a large, unneutered, male dog in the same house as kids, babies or old people.
tl;dr - I'm not against "nontraditional families or societies", but it seems like a really bad idea here
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Sibling Incest - okay I guess but probably awkward Trans-Generational Incest involving a Child - child can't consent Trans-Generational Incest involving Adults - probably irreversibly awkward for life Beastiality - they're probably consenting, so okay I guess, but good luck keeping it trained and well-behaved around other people
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
From: o___Okami | #001 My friend's argument against homosexuality is that yes, people can be born with a natural affinity towards homosexuality but the same can be said of incest and bestiality and that doesn't make them any less "wrong", it's just society decided to place stigma around incest and bestiality whereas society is now deciding to take away the stigma from homosexuality but they're still along the same lines of sexual deviancy.
There's a difference though. Being born with an innate desire for something does not make it right. I'm not speaking out again homosexuality, people should know me better than that, but I find an argument where you could simply change it around and be like "this guy was born with the brain of a serial killer, so it's okay" to be shaky. Obviously it's not okay.
There will always be a tiny subset of people who want/believe that even the most socially awkward things should be legal, and just because they think that does not mean it should be.
But to answer the question. For animals I'd probably have to argue for the sake of the animal. True it might have several health related problems (more so than normal sex). And while we might be able to assume an animal consented, truth is it might just be that the owner trained them or that their basic urges just took over.
For incest, I'd agree with the majority it's much more a social thing. However, I would say that Adult/Child incest (even if not underaged) is pretty bad since it involves a person who can theoretically use a position of power.
bestiality is wrong because an animal cannot give consent. there is nothing morally wrong with incest as long as you don't have children, having children would be unfair to the kids because of the potential birth defects and the likelyhood of being ostracized by their peers
Desire, of course, isn't the same as consent, so to me that's a gray area... but a male animal jumping on somebody and initiating it? Doesn't sound like animal abuse to me.
again we're brought to minors. if a 10 year old wants to jump his 20 year old teacher he is not capable of giving consent, legally. it would be rape on her end. same deal here. you can use it with a person on drugs too, the situation doesn't really change. there's no reason why it wouldn't be considered rape.
the uncle/niece situation though is definitely a weird one because of conditioning more than anything else. it's not even the relationship as much as the older party can abuse their authority to create a setting where they're gifting the kid to make them 'fall for them.' this is a definite known form of abuse, but if you look at the adult equivalent of it (which is really no different) then it's still legal there. so while it can be messed up.... the law really shouldn't involve itself too deeply there, if at all.
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The King Wang. Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.
again we're brought to minors. if a 10 year old wants to jump his 20 year old teacher he is not capable of giving consent, legally. it would be rape on her end. same deal here. you can use it with a person on drugs too, the situation doesn't really change. there's no reason why it wouldn't be considered rape.
This is a good point, but parents also probably don't want their 10 year old kid having sex with someone else's 10 year old kid. It's a good argument that a dog can never be truly mentally mature, but we still allow dogs to breed with each other, so I still think there's an argument to be had. I will concede that a 10 year old kid wanting a 20 year old teacher doesn't make those relations "right", though, and if applied to beastiality, that might be the nail in the coffin.
the uncle/niece situation though is definitely a weird one because of conditioning more than anything else. it's not even the relationship as much as the older party can abuse their authority to create a setting where they're gifting the kid to make them 'fall for them.' this is a definite known form of abuse, but if you look at the adult equivalent of it (which is really no different) then it's still legal there. so while it can be messed up.... the law really shouldn't involve itself too deeply there, if at all.
The "position of power" argument is one I agree with, and actually it could probably be applied to the pet-owner thing too. If someone specifically trains an animal for inter-racial sexual relations, that seems like a similar situation to me. I just feel like, hypothetically, if a male dog is released into a breeding environment containing female dogs and female humans, and it ends up having sex with the humans sometimes, it is making an active choice.
-- bokonon get your sense-making the **** out of this topic now - Cat1001 Brawl FC: 1461-9803-2942 /// X-Box Live Gamertag: AGGGH
Years from now, there will be people saying they're being discriminated against because a sister and brother getting married will be illegal, but two men or two women who are related getting married isn't.
From: Liquid Wind | #030 bestiality is wrong because an animal cannot give consent. there is nothing morally wrong with incest as long as you don't have children, having children would be unfair to the kids because of the potential birth defects and the likelyhood of being ostracized by their peers
Wanglicious posted... the uncle/niece situation though is definitely a weird one because of conditioning more than anything else. it's not even the relationship as much as the older party can abuse their authority to create a setting where they're gifting the kid to make them 'fall for them.' this is a definite known form of abuse, but if you look at the adult equivalent of it (which is really no different) then it's still legal there. so while it can be messed up.... the law really shouldn't involve itself too deeply there, if at all.