The internet is a treasure-trove of “Look for one thing, find another!”, often giving rise to “Who knew there even was such a thing?” Case in point, the other day I stumbled across a slough of articles in defense of bestiality. The one argument that struck me as particularly compelling was this:
Most people think it’s perfectly okay to kill a pig and eat it, but it’s not okay to fuck it. So clearly, at least in our minds, wrongfulness can’t be a function of harmfulness, since I’m pretty sure anyone, or anything, is more harmed by being killed and eaten than being fucked.
But nor can the wrongfulness of bestiality hang, like rape or pedophilia, on the absence of consent, since I’m equally sure that neither does the pig consent to being killed and eaten.
One could argue that bestiality is a species of animal cruelty, but as these websites make clear, that case can be made only against a very small minority of practices.
So the only consistent justification for the criminalization of any and all bestiality would be to simultaneously criminalize a) the confinement of one’s household pets, and, on the dietary front, b) all but strict veganism.
Of course one thinker’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens. And so, since I’m not going to give up honey in my tea when I have a sore throat, nor am I going to let my dog run free down Main Street, I have only two options. Either I have to let consistency be damned, or I have to campaign for the decriminalization of bestiality.
False dichotomy. There’s a third option, at least for having to deal with any future moral conundra. I could just cancel my subscription to the internet.
Categories: Humour
Paulosophical Vimplications 
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