I want to look at a piece titled Liberating Libertarianism from the Lunatics by Rich Powers. He says the following:
I…had the pleasure of hearing a Libertarian Party speaker earlier this year. Before he even arrived, the room was abuzz about this chap. You see, he is known the county over for speaking to high school seniors and using bestiality – yes bestiality – to illustrate libertarianism. “You can have sex with a horse and, so long as you don’t infringe on anyone’s rights, you can go ahead and do it.” Never mind that animals can’t give consent, but the fact is that’s the worst possible way to spread your ideology…period. Instantly, you lose prospective voters who might otherwise agree with you.
Libertarianism can be summed up in the following statement: “You are free to do whatever you want so long as you don’t reduce other people’s freedom to do whatever they want.”
Here is an argument that some (maybe most) libertarians use to promote bestiality. According to them, libertarianism holds that pursuit of happiness is moral. Sex in pursuit of happiness is selfish and also moral. Sex between humans and non-human animals is also moral under libertarianism.
Sex between humans and non-human animals or any trans-species intercourse has the benefit of zero risk of pregnancy, meaning there is no worries about having to rush to the abortion clinic the day after.
Some people criticize bestiality, saying that non-human animals cannot consent to sex and therefore sex with animals goes against their freedom. This may be true, but if we uphold this idea then killing animals for food would be immoral as well and we should all be vegetarians. When humans kill animals for food the animals certainly don’t consent to being killed. Killing an animals is done at the expense of the animal’s will and for the pleasure of meat-eating humans.
When you kill an animal for food, the animal almost certain doesn’t consent to being killed because by the laws of evolution all animals try to live and not die.
Animals gain pleasure from sex because sex as a behavior is favored for in human evolution. Most animals gain pleasure from sex although many may not enjoy it if they do not consent.
The bottom line is that when an animal is killed there is almost a zero percent probability that the animal consented to being killed. However, when an animal is the victim of sexual intercourse, there is a positive probability that it consents and enjoys the sex.
Therefore, based on expected probabilities alone, raping an animal is likely to do more to increase the animal’s welfare than killing it for food.
If pleasure if the basis of morality (e.g. if we adopted a utilitarian system of morality) then if killing animals is moral then it follows that raping animals is also equally moral if not more moral because the animal victim of rape is more likely to enjoy being raped than being killed.
Many people say that non-human animals, e.g. goats, cannot consent to sex. But I think they can. Even though goats and human are part of different species, the theory of evolution states we are all related. We can all understand each other. Many owners of pets can understand if their dogs or cats are happy, sad, or angry. If you started having sex with a goat, it is fairly easy to tell whether the goat is happy or sad. If you suspect the goat is sad and doesn’t want to have sex, you could stop and try again another time. Trying to respect the animal’s choice then increases the probability that the goat will enjoy the sex, which makes bestialityeven more moral than killing for food.
Legalizing bestiality can also have significant economic benefits. At the moment because bestiality is illegal, there is a missing market. Those humans who want to have sex with non-human animals cannot do so, and so there is a deadweight loss from government intervention since a potential trade between animal supplier and consumers who want sex is not realized.
The demand from consumers who want animal sex will result in growth in a new industry sector that caters to supplying animals ready for sex. These companies that specialize in, say, human-goat sex will hire workers, pay taxes, satisfy consumer demand, and contribute to GDP growth.
Update 24 October 2009:
I have spoken about bestiality to some co-workers. I argue that sex between animals and humans should be allowed. There are concerns over the welfare of the animal. For example, the human may engage in very aggressive sex that benefits the human but not the animal. Politics is about compromise, so what if we compromised and argue for legalization of sex between humans and animals but regulate the industry in a way so that the animal experiences pleasure when it has sex with humans. This can be achieved by giving humans who want sex with animals training and licenses. One of my co-workers argued that because animals cannot consent, we do not know if e.g. a horse who has sex with a human consents to it. I argued that we humans already kill animals for food. At least with regulated bestiality the animal is alive after the sex and experiences pleasure. My co-worker argued that because the animal cannot express its desires then we cannot know if the horse prefers to die than to have sex. My argument is that it is obvious to a human whether a horse or any other animal is experiencing pleasure or pain. If this were not the case then having pets should be banned because, even if you think you are taking good care of your pet, you do not know whether that pet prefers to die. My co-worker actually has a pet, so for her to make this argument that we cannot know if an animal is tortured or experience pleasure is hypocritical. How can this co-worker argue against pleasurable sex between a human and animal when she engages in what she perceives as pleasurable interaction between her and her pet?
I gave another argument, which is that if regulated bestiality were legalized, no one would be worse off. If a man has sex witha horse, the man and the horse benefit by getting pleasure. No one else is worse off. My co-worker then argued that because culture frowns upon bestiality, even if it were legalized it wouldn’t happen anyway. I think it’s obvious based on news that I read that there is demand for bestiality. And even if there weren’t, who cares? If we legalize bestiality and nobody engages in the activity, we are no worse off than when we had banned it. However, if we legalize bestiality and there are humans who want sex with animals, those people who have sex with animals are better off.
Another argument people use is that even if a horse and a man are having sex and even if the horse and the man experience pleasure from the act, there may be third-parties out there who, upon knowing that there are horses out there having sex, experience dissatisfaction. This is a fair argument. Even though the third-party are not physically harmed in a way, they want to be able to control other people’s behavior. But if we allow laws to be made to coerce people to do something just because a third-party does not like it, then anything you do can be banned. For example, suppose I decide to have a shower. There may be people out there who do not like it when I take a shower. If we factor in their dissatisfaction when drafting legislation, we can ban people from having showers. Some argue that having showers is something just about everyone does and just about everyone supports it. However, bestiality is in the minority. They are arguing therefore that you should be forced to do what the majority wants you to do. This of course fits in how democratic institutions operate and it can explain why bestiality is currently illegal in many developed democratic countries. However, if we accept that majority taste is correct then we would have to accept things like banning of homosexual marriage. Many people would be happy with this. However, the co-worker who argued against bestiality supports homosexual marriage, which is where the contradiction comes in. If you are anti-gay marriage and are so because you believe that majority rules, you must be willing to accept every single other majority opinion. Even if you disagree with just one majority opinion and are against bestiality, you are a hypocrite. You must also be willing to accept new opinions as majority opinion changes. For example, even though most people in developed countries I think are against homosexual marriage, that is fast changing and if eventually the majority does support homosexual marriage, you must be willing to accept it because you believe that majority rules. You must also be willing to accept majority opinion during the early twentieth century, e.g. the majority opinion that blacks were inferior, women should stay in the home, etc.