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You can substitute the "only reason" or the "main reason" in my argument, that was my intent at any rate.
Disgust isn't a particularly good heuristic by itself, and while optic nerve signals are usually thanklessly at work doing useful things, if you start seeing the walls move or figures appear, such conflict with your normal priors and common sense should suggest it's more likely you're going crazy or being tricked than otherwise, the same when disgust isn't backed up by proper empirical considerations.
I think the overwhelming majority of people are unlikely to even want to engage in bestiality in the first place, and by my lights, the practise itself does little harm to anyone or anything I care about.
If I was put in a position where everyone else around me was fucking pigs, I'm not joining in, and if I'm Isekai'd into the body of a young Boris Johnson, I doubt I can even get it up.
Thus I don't particularly care about the creation of new people who engage in bestiality, since I deem anyone almost anyone who does finds it attractive abnormal in the first place!
I'm not one of those people who naively (or maliciously) claim that abolition or prohibition doesn't/can't work. The existence of Bukele's regime is certainly an example when it comes to drug related crime.
The issue is whether the costs associated with enforcement are worth it, and in this regard, I say that's not so. You can get fentanyl off the streets by shooting all the dealers and their customers or subjecting everyone to random stops and searches regularly after removing due process, but such a measure is most likely a pretty bad idea.
Further, the issue here is that bestiality is easy to conceal. It's not like building a personal nuclear reactor or even building an indoor weed farm, barnyard animals or pets are everywhere, and the kind of surveillance necessary to eliminate all potential bestiality is perfect panopticon in nature.
And often, unless caught in the act, there is little to no concrete evidence of the "crime", especially in animals bigger than a dog.
It isn't particularly possible to eliminate and (in my opinion) not desirable to eliminate, hence my claim that it should be de-criminalized. I'm not demanding wider society accept it or endorse it. Plenty of things are legal yet frowned upon, and I have no stake in the matter that makes me want more.
The majority of Rationalists aren't polyamorous, even if polys are over represented therein.
To me, the overall Western attitude towards polyamory is perfectly acceptable, modest to strong societal disapproval yet no meaningful legal consequences when it's not outright non-consensual cheating in a marriage.
In other words, I'm not asking people who disapprove of bestiality to like or endorse it, merely to tolerate it without judicial punishment.
I care about abnormal people and believe practicing bestiality harms them. I also think the marginally abnormal person here is not really all that abnormal; we're not just talking about 70 IQ Afghani shepherds, but also terminally online autists (especially furries) who could easily live perfectly normal lives if not memed into identifying as otherkin and othersexual. If you do not care about these people, or believe bestiality does not harm them, then that should be the focus of our discussion since it is our object-level disagreement.
Plenty of things are both easy to conceal and illegal, even absent the existence of a panopticon. It's pretty easy to keep children permanently chained up in your basement and do all manner of unholy things to them without anyone ever knowing. Making such behavior illegal still has many obvious positive effects:
Our options are not just to either legalize it or ban it and build a suitable panopticon; even lazy enforcement using existing resources probably gets us 80% of the benefit of full enforcement.
The more Rationalist you are the more likely you are to be poly, to the point I'd consider being poly to be a characteristic of Rationalism, much like upper arm strength is a characteristic of being male.
Cheating has no legal consequence at all in probably 99% of marriages in the States. Would you prefer it did? If not, why mention it? (I would prefer the government give adulterers a slap on the wrist, at least).
Wow, this argument sure sounds familiar. I wonder if anyone's ever said this in the past, and if so, how it went for those asked to tolerate it without celebrating it?
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