Most LGBT Activists = Conservative Cowards?

[Robert]

Almost all of the LGBT rights activists who I have met are scared to talk about real sexual liberation.
They are quite content to stick to their own little group rather than to reach out to other groups such as zooaphiliacs, necrophiliacs and paedophiles.

Now, just do me a favour and shut up and read for a moment. I can already see the knee-jerk reactionary comments coming my way but, please, lets pause to think. Why are these groups not discussed in forums such as this? Why do we shy away from this discussion or even attack people attempting to understand these groups as "unhelpful" or "damaging to the LGBT cause"?

If we truly want the freedom to be who we are then we should also accept or, at least, attempt to educate ourselves on these other groups. It is a total strawman to pretend that everybody in these groups is a rapist and a criminal. Before you condemn these groups and move on, dont you think its worth asking yourself whether having sex with an animal could ever be ok? Why not discuss the question: under what circumstances is necrophilia acceptable? Why dont we challenge the notion that all paedophiles should be treated as second class citizens with no rights?

I just think it is deeply hypocritical and cowardly of the LGBT community to keep discussion of gender and sexual liberation to their own shallow interests.

/RANTOVER

[Danielle]

The main difference is choice between us and them is choice.

Animals and dead people can't give consent and though children can, you have to take in their maturity into account.

If we were to move your argument to incest between two consenting adults then I think your argument holds much more weight.

[Kidd]

The issue with all of the groups you've mentioned is informed consent. Children, dead bodies, and animals are not capable of giving it so it's rape, and in the case of necrophilia, abuse of a corpse which is a felony in the United States, I believe.

[anatta]

Originally Posted by Corporal Sparks

It is a total strawman to pretend that everybody in these groups is a rapist and a criminal. Before you condemn these groups and move on, dont you think its worth asking yourself whether having sex with an animal could ever be ok? Why not discuss the question: under what circumstances is necrophilia acceptable? Why dont we challenge the notion that all paedophiles should be treated as second class citizens with no rights?

Presumably then you are talking about inactive pedophiles as opposed to child molesters.

You could say the same about many other activist groups: why don't the Anti-Defamation League join forces with black rights organisations for example, or why don't feminist groups become umbrella organisations with LGBT ones, as sexism, homophobia and transphobia have inter-related causes and philosophical connections? Why don't they ALL form one big anti-discrimination group, disabled people as well? It would become so non-specialist that few people would be educated or experienced enough to run them well while covering all the bases.

Already, various LGBT organisations are accused of neglecting certain groups under the LGBT umbrella in favour of others, and certain issues as well, for example in some states of the USA you can be refused a job or sacked for being LGBT, denied housing, and forbidden from entering a homeless shelter, and yet all I ever hear about from the American media is same sex marriage, which is surely relatively trivial unless you are a financially independent adult with passing privilege and/or living and working somewhere where you don't need to fret, as most powerful LGBT activists are. Only since the WWW made stories of LGBT suicides higher profile than before has school bullying even made the agenda. Groups like these already have such a balancing act to perform that expanding the scope of an organisation is not necessarily beneficial for either group in the end, if there isn't enough connection between the two.

So you know that I'm not being hypocritical here:

I am one of those asexuals who is against asexuality being included under the LGBT umbrella. I'm not going to protest about it where it happens or anything, but personally I think that the needs of the asexual community are so different than the needs of the LGBT one, and also historically, socially and philosophically distinct, that it doesn't make sense to even talk about them in the same breath most of the time. I am on this site as a gender-questioning and romantic orientation-questioning person and an ally, not as an asexual.

It would make far more sense to me to unite feminism (the kind I'm thinking of anyway), male liberation (again the kind I'm thinking of) and LGBT activism under a single name that sums up the common principles involved, like "anti-gender restrictivity" or something. Something more elegant than that hopefully, haha.

But LGBT discrimination and sex discrimination are at least all caused by the same thing: sex-at-birth-based expectations that are either false (e.g. the belief that women are less intelligent) or are statistically valid but held as ideals to be conformed to instead of neutral correlations (e.g. women tend to get more broody than men, therefore all women should want to have babies; men tend not to be attracted to other men therefore all men should not be attracted to men).

[Zontar]

Originally Posted by Danielle

The main difference is choice between us and them is choice.

Animals and dead people can't give consent and though children can, you have to take in their maturity into account.

If we were to move your argument to incest between two consenting adults then I think your argument holds much more weight.

That we even need to point this out says volumes about the OP.

In my opinion, not enough is being done to persecute these terrible people. The last thing we need is a depatholigization of these severe mental conditions.

[jargon]

Well I can see where the OP is coming from, at least enough to play devil's advocate.

So to start, there's no theoretical reason that people with these particular sexual interests will automatically act upon them, as has been mentioned. The problem is much easier if we imagine only necrophiliacs/zoophiliacs/paedophiles who perhaps just fantasize about certain sexual acts but, as much as they'd love to, resist the urge to perform them.

Now as far as actually doing these things, I'd have to assess them one by one. Zoophilia is difficult to justify in most cases because you can't get consent in the way that you get it with humans. Then again (this may seem weak, but) animals dont get formal consent from each other in the same sense that we do either. Consent for animals, when it is given, often just means not putting up a fight, or for some species, performing specific rituals/displays to show that their into it. If in theory a zoophile could justifiably get non-verbal consent like this, I wouldnt see a moral problem.

Paedophilia is in my mind certainly wrong at certain ages/levels of cognitive maturity, but whether a person is "qualified" to give consent in that sense has little to do with the legal age boundaries for the area. I dont know what authority can really determine whether any individual person is cognitively reliable to make that decision. Theres no reason to think that each individual law code is that best-authority for each individual citizen it addresses, so there aer at least debateable cases.

Necrophilia, well certainly the rules about a person's right to his body after death dont go out the window just because of your sexual interests. The only case I could imagine it would be if a person specified during life (being of sound mind and blah blah) that they were ok with they spouse/friend/whoever that they knew was into that doing whatever they wanted with the body.

I'll admit there's just lots of generalized discomfort with all of these. Especially that last one just creeps me out having thought about it. Certainly some of these cases are pathological, but its conceivable that others cuold live an otherwise mentally healthy life.

[anatta]

Originally Posted by jargon

Zoophilia is difficult to justify in most cases because you can't get consent in the way that you get it with humans. Then again (this may seem weak, but) animals dont get formal consent from each other in the same sense that we do either. Consent for animals, when it is given, often just means not putting up a fight, or for some species, performing specific rituals/displays to show that their into it. If in theory a zoophile could justifiably get non-verbal consent like this, I wouldnt see a moral problem.

Verbal confirmation that each party wants to have sex is not required for an act between humans to be considered consenting, non-verbal behaviour is more commonly enough.

I've seen enough horses and bulls make serious attempts at mounting humans to know that a consenting act with an animal is theoretically possible, and I'm guessing the man who famously died after a horse penetrated him didn't force, bribe or in any way pressure it to do so.

Having said that, I think as I explained above that if people want to change bestiality laws, LGBT activist materials would not be a good choice of media through which to campaign. LGBT discrimination takes very different forms and occurs for entirely different reasons, and there's no reason why LGBT activists should be expected to know more about the situation of bestiality than anyone else.

It would be like LGBT organisations spending time and money on unrelated anti-racism campaigns: although of course individuals can support both causes, it would be inefficient and impractical for an organisation dedicated to one to adopt the other as part of its own reason d'etre.

[Doctor Faustus]

I wish I could say more about this, given that I'm studying ethics, but essentially my objection rests on the difficulties of obtaining consent as well as the thin edge of the wedge argument that anatta raised.

[Mogget]

I think our society's treatment of pedophiles is very counter-productive and reprehensible. There are probably lots of pedophiles that would like to seek treatment, but don't do so because they're worried about the repercussions should anyone find out. Not only that, but we more or less accept that it's part of the natural order of things that child molesters get raped and killed in prison; we even joke about it as though the rape of anyone were a matter of amusement and justice.

That said, I would absolutely oppose making child molestation legal. Not just because of consent, I can imagine a child being manipulated into consenting fairly easily, but because that consent can't be truly informed (although that alone isn't sufficient) and because of the immense psychological damage that we know results from being molested.

Bestiality is an interesting case where the argument that animals can't give consent makes absolutely no sense. Animals don't consent to being locked in cages so small that can't even lie down, don't consent to having their beaks or tails cut off without anesthetic, don't consent to be slaughtered, don't consent to being spayed or neutered (with the case of farm animals something that again happens without anesthetic), the list goes on. It makes no sense to turn around and say that in the one case of sex, consent suddenly matters when it doesn't matter in dozens of cases that are much more traumatizing than sexual interaction.

That said, I wouldn't support human-animal marriage as animals can't enter into contracts, but as squicked out by the idea of bestiality as I am, I think coming up with a moral argument against it is more difficult than a lot of people think it is.

[Hot Pink]

Sorry, but I don't consider any of the examples as within the same realm as LGBT. As others have said, it's a choice to rape children. I will not tolerate it in my community and I don't think anyone should. Call me conservative or a bigot all you want, but my position will not falter on this issue.

[anatta]

Originally Posted by Hot Pink

Sorry, but I don't consider any of the examples as within the same realm as LGBT. As others have said, it's a choice to rape children. I will not tolerate it in my community and I don't think anyone should. Call me conservative or a bigot all you want, but my position will not falter on this issue.

No one has suggested legalising or supporting adults having sex with children. Paedophilia is defined as sexual attraction to children, not sex with children. You're thinking of molestation.