Does it matter if animals cannot consent to sex with humans?

We all know that argument of the evangelical right that legalizing gay marriage will inevitably lead to the cross species relationships. The obvious counter argument to this is that animals cannot consent to having sex with a human (to our knowledge) making homosexuality permissible but zoophilia not. But animals are not consenting to being stuffed into a slaughter house and yet we as a society deems this morally acceptable. Could we as a species just enjoy a ham sandwich more than moral consistency?

Or why is animal husbandry acceptable but bestiality is not, me forcing myself on a ewe probably has the same amount of consent as me forcing a ram on it or artificially inseminating a cow. Yet one is acceptable and one isn't.

Also this article Heavy Petting was pretty of interesting.

Do animals consent to being fixed? or to being locked up in a cage?

However thought animals don't give vocal consent to things, they can however get body language to which the person can use this as a mean of the animal giving consent to the act. Though animals have not shown any signs of consent in terms of slaughter, they do show consent when sex is on the table. However one would have to ask do they need the consent of everyone and everything before they take action.

This is a very odd but interesting topic i'll try to find more about it, without looking like a wierdo for trying to look up Zoophila.

Animals are just organic machines. Doesn't matter what happens to them. Humans are typically people, however. If sex with animals is immoral, it's because of the effect on the person, not on the animal.

I still find Animals to be equal to humans or show some of the capabilities of humans and not just organic machines for my hunger and amusement. If it doesn't matter what happens to them does that mean I should go around slaughtering Dogs and Cows?

Animals don't have to deal with the societal views of having sex with another species, infact to them its a social norm. To us its an immoral act.

No, because that's illegal. The reason we care about animals at all is because we've decided to give them some basic rights in limited circumstances. Laws that protect animals from abuse are justified only because of the impact that animal abuse has on people.

Suffering is not equivalent to pain. Suffering can only be experienced by people, and that's what makes it valuable. Pain is a mechanical phenomena, a bunch of electricity sparking around in gray matter. The only reason that we (typically) see pain as akin to suffering is because pain affects a person negatively. It doesn't really make a moral difference if there's an electrical mash-up in your head, it makes a moral difference that that electrical mash-up is affecting you as a person in a negative way.

So wait we only care about Animals because of Humans, should we not care about animals because morality and the fact that we general should care. If they are only Justified because of the impact that animal abuse has on people then what if there was no impact on people and still on animals, does this give us right to whatever?

In what way is Suffering not equivalent to pain, for all definitions they seem to be the same thing which pain being the physical suffering (Not the mental or emotional/Psychological) so im curious as to how there are not, making it such that Suffering is a kin to only humans.

Well about morals, do animals have morals. From what I can gather animals do have amounts of mortality.

Humans are organic machines as well, we are just slightly more complex in terms of our mental ability.

The moral obligation towards animal arises in a two fold manner from our enhanced mental ability. As we are all organic machines we have the right to exploit and abuse each other in order to survive, and we are free to use our enhanced intellect to that end. However, we are morally confined to act so only insofar as it would be accepted within the natural law. Ie, although we may use our intellect to our advantage we may only act in a manner constrained by the natural law. Interspecies rape is not a feature permisable by the natural law and hence we do not posses the moral right to enforce whatever morality we would apply to our own species upon another.

examples. Humanity may find cannabalism to be morally wrong but we would have no right to prevent cannibalism in other species if its was observed as occour naturally. Simillarly, if cannibalism was observed to be decried by the natural law we would have no right to enforce it upon other species even if we deemed it to be morally acceptable on an internal basis.

We may regard the killing of other humans without consent to be morally unjust, however we may slaughter other species for the purposes of food and provision as this is what is observed to occour in nature. Conversly, although entirely within our ability to kill other species for pure pleasure we are not morally enabled to do so to other animals as such behaviour is not seen to be permisable in the natural order.

In regard to the topic therefore, humanity may allow any manner of restriction on human relationships but must obey the natural order when dealing with other species. We observe that inter-species relations are opposed to the natural order and therefore we should not morally allow such relationships to occor between humans and other species. Although we may be free to permit relationships between humans that are seen to be against the order of nature, eg necrophilia.

Just because something is natural does not make morally right. Human nature is to avoid pain and pursue pleasure but that does not mean that we should avoid pain and pursue pleasure.

Well the point was humanity had evolved to the point where we had defeated natural law and could rationalise beyond it, however by that same virtue we recognised our lack of moral right to impose our morality onto species yet to evolve to our intellectual ability.

As I said, if humanity wished to create pain and avoid pleasure we could rationalise that, but natural law, which other species are still bound by would dictate a pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain, thus we are morally unjustified in creating pain on members of another species, unless it would be justified naturally such as for food and provision.

Well the thing that separates us from the animals and technically puts us above all other species (on Earth) is that we are sentient. Now back to the topic.

There are two uses for sex, the first one is reproduction, and the second one is pleasure. Zooplilia is for pleasure because reproduction with other species is impossible. The animal giving consent to this zoophilia is possible through body language, but it's not likely to happen because they would prefer to mate with their own species. The only other way is to force it upon them.

Augustus, natural law is a useless metric with which to gauge morality. As an ethical framework, it can only measure the morality of persons anyways, not organic automatons. But even with people, as Mayor has pointed out, natural law holds no water against almost any other kind of argument. The only case in which it might be useful is when there simply aren't any opposing positions and natural law can be used to reinforce a statement.

On its own, however, natural law lacks a logical foundation. What is natural, or what occurs without the interference of people, doesn't have an assigned moral value. It's just a series of events. Moral value can only be attached by people. If we choose to attach morality to something because of natural law, it's not because nature is inherently valuable, it's because we have decided that nature has value. Now why nature has value, even value that we assign, is beyond me. And I sure as hell haven't seen any natural law proponents explain it.

My cat sure enjoys fucking my shoe. And my guinea pigs wouldn't stop fucking.

I would think that they are just stupid.

I didn't say anything in my post about "humans are the only species who use sex for pleasure". Re-read my post.

Okay, I see what you did there. I already know that.