Zoo what?
"Zoophile" is the new "acceptable" code name for people who love animals. And I mean people who LOVE animals.
The main intellectual brain thrust for this budding movement is long-time "Philosopher of Ethics" and university household nut Peter Singer, who most recently wrote on the topic via an essay called, and I kid you not, "Heavy Petting".
If his arguments sound familiar, it is because of they are the same arguments used for the acceptance of homosexuality. Who said slippery slopes were always fallacy?
The first argument is that since we accept the premise for homosexuality, namely the validity of purposefully non-procreative sex, then there can be no objection to any non-procreative sex. Bestiality would fall under that category.
Coincidentally, this first argument did not originate with the homosexual movement. It originated with artificial contraception. So, to my fellow Filipinos, this argument will be coming to a government clinic near you, if useful idiot Edsel Lagman has his way.
The second argument is that it is not "unnatural", since cross-specie sexual activity is documented in nature. The Ass, for example, is a cross-bred donkey horse. And, if we accept the Darwinian premise that man is just another animal, we ought to abandon our "specieist" superiority complex and accept other animals as equals and potential mating partners.
That, in a nutshell, is the entire philosophical-moral argument for Bestiality. It is also the entire philosophical-moral argument (and no, sentiments are not arguments so keep that "we love each other" crap to yourself) for homosexuality. If we are to allow homosexuality, then we are to allow bestiality. Looks like the gay movement is going to get a new bed-partner.
"We can have our own Pride Parade too?"
Notice the language used by some "zoophiles" as noted in Saletan's article:
"I'm the first out-of-the-closet 'zoo' to be attacked because of my sexual orientation,"
"I'd like my significant other to attend by my side if possible as she was present in the house during the attack, though not an eyewitness to it, thank goodness," Buble wrote. "I've been informed your personal permission is needed given that my wife is not human."
The "zoos" are already using the language of the gay movement! Viva la Revolucion!
Saletan, ever the good liberal, tries to stave off this eventual partnership. He points to a philosophical principle that he says is well-defined and consistently applicable in creating a barrier between homosexuality and bestiality. That principle is the principle of consent.
After all, says Saletan, if we have statutory rape laws because we cannot recognize the consent of children, we ought to have laws against bestiality because we cannot recognize the consent of animals. Saletan then proceeds to call it game, set and match for his ideology. Liberalism for the win!
He has a problem though. As NAMbLA well knows, age-limits are coming under siege for their arbitrary nature. (Without a metaphysical foundation, it is arbitrary. And we've been chucking metaphysical foundations out the window since Voltaire and Descartes. Or in this case, since Heather had two mommies and one of them an out-and-proud teen.) Furthermore, if the Middle Ages can have functioning wives at 14 years of age, who is to say that age-limits are written in stone? NAMbLA and PETA, sitting in a tree...
But that is the weaker argument against it. The stronger argument against Saletan's position is a question he already asked earlier in his article while mocking conservative objections to vegetarianism and bestiality: if man can kill and eat a cow, why can't he rape it?
In effect, one could ask, if we do not obtain the consent of a cow before we eat it, why do we need its consent to rape it?
There is a ontological difference between children and animals. We never eat our children. And, we certainly will not ask a cow's permission before turning it into beef. These are two beings on opposite ends of the rational, personal spectrum. The Darwinian insistence of man's equality to animals is a fallacy that must be shed before this is understood, or we will start treating our children as animals and animals as our children. It is this, and not "consent", that is the ultimate argument against bestiality.
The thing is, it is a metaphysical argument. And when we adopt sound metaphysical arguments to prevent the rapacious monsters within us from rationalizing themselves, we will have to abjure this silly notion that purposeful non-procreative sex is a valid, licit, moral act. The "ontological shield" will save us from bestiality, but it will not save us from necrophilia, pedophilia, polygamy and other sexual perversions. Neither will the "consent shield", as age-limits do not have power if they do not have sound metaphysical reasoning behind them.
Ultimately, the best defense, and the most consistent argument, against sexual perversion is not, as Saletan claims, "consent", but the traditional preservation of procreative sex within a stable union as the only valid, licit and moral form of sex.
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