Monkeybot

oops

Monkeybot

What is necessary for a sexual relationship to be morally OK?

My answer is basically Informed Consent.

Non consensual sex is rape, no matter what the age, gender, or species of the non-consenting party. (This, of course, presumes sentience, which makes yguy's comparison to watermelons patently ridiculous.) It's a totally different issue from homosexuality. Homosexual rape exists, but it's in the same moral category as heterosexual rape, which is to say, Horribly Wrong. It's not wrong because of the genders of the participants. It's wrong because of the lack of consent.

Informed consent means that both parties have some sort of understanding of what's going on, and can therefore agree.

Animals are necessarily excluded from informed consent, since, to my knowledge, no real method of communicating clearly with animals has been established. Even Kanzi the bonobo can only communicate at the level of a three-year-old, at best. And most of his communications are limited to "tangibles" (objects he can see) rather than "intangibles" (world peace, love, justice).

Without the ability to clearly communicate with animals, we have no way of properly determining consent. Worse, we have no way of explaining clearly to the animal what is going on, so that s/he can even know what s/he is consenting to in the first place!

Let's say I put poison pellets in my bird's food. If my bird happily snaps up the pellets, can I assume he's consenting to eat poison? No, of course not. He's just too dumb to tell the difference between poison and bird food.

If I yell at him over and over, "You're eating poison," is that going to make a difference? No. No amount of explanation on my part will impart to the bird that he is about to eat poison. I can't communicate what I'm getting him to consent to; even if by some freak act he understood what I was saying, he wouldn't be able to communicate his consent back to me.

So I have no way of knowing. In such a case, consent cannot be assumed, and one must err on the side of safety. The same goes for sex with animals. You cannot assume an animal is consenting to sex if it puts up little resistance (and by the way, I find this possibility highly dubious). You must err on the side of caution.

Oh, and a sidenote on the subject of interspecies sex: Part of the taboo, I believe, is due to a) animals generally being unsanitary, and b) animals not having the same intelligence level as us. We have "icky" feelings because of these things. On the other hand, suppose hygenic, sentient aliens landed on Earth. Say they looked like your favorite Star Trek alien of the week. Would it be as "icky" to have sex with them? In other words, is having sex with a cow the same thing as having sex with Gul Dukat?

Anyway, informed consent also excludes children. Children are not informed enough to make healthy decisions about entering into sexual relationships. Moreover, children are far more susceptible to manipulation and coercion than adults, by the very nature of the adult-child power dynamic. Maybe there's that 1-in-100 kid who gets lucky and isn't scarred for life. But it's harmful in enough cases that we can safely make a general rule -- it's not OK to have sex with children. (By the way, I'm thinking mainly of prepubescent children here. I think a 15 year old is a pretty different story from a 7 year old. But I REALLY don't want to get into a paedophilia discussion here, please! )

So, how does homosexuality stack up?

Homosexual sex often takes place between two (or more) consenting individuals. Sometimes, and this may come as a shock to some people, it actually happens within a committed relationship, and is a healthy expression of love. And, of course, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes there's one-night stands. Sometimes there's cheap sex. Sometimes there's "friends-with-benefits" relationships going on. The main issue is informed consent. If you're of age, and you're consenting to have a friends-with-benefits relationship with someone, or a pity fuck, or what have you, that's your business, and nobody else's. Maybe it's not my personal preference, but since when does my personal preference have any bearing at all on the situation?

So, to conclude. Given that:

a) all participants are of age, and

b) all participants are giving informed consent,

I do not see where homosexuality is any of my fucking business. Why on earth is it of any relevance to me what these (consenting adults) do behind closed doors? How does their behavior affect me in the slightest? How is my life significantly altered one way or the other by my neighbor's decision to fuck a member of his own gender? Please tell me what significant wrong is done to other people by two consenting adults having a private sexual relationship.

Honestly I think this is the biggest moral non-issue in the world. Gays exist, they have sex with each other, get over it. This is not a big deal.

Monkeybot

.

Monkeybot

how embarrassing

Monkeybot

argh, sorry

Dominus Paradoxum

Bravo, Monkeybot. I think your post is the sanest one in this thread so far.

winstonjen

Right. And even if they do injure themselves or contract STDs, it's not my business - the risks are theirs to deal with.

Daleth

Very well put, Monkeybot.

Monkeybot

Thanks Apparently it was so good I had to post it five times!

paul30

As long as it's between consenting adults, homosexuality is not only ethical but EXTREMELY ethical.

I have a friend who dislikes it, and says that it is unnatural because it cannot lead to procreation.

Yet this is what makes it so good.

The world is not facing an underpopulation problem.