The other example I gave was pedophilia. For a Christian, a child is an inherently pre-sexual creature, and engaging in intercourse with someone whose end is not to have sex (to say nothing of the lack of a proper marriage context) is intrinsically immoral. For many nonbelievers (though I don’t want to generalize here), consent is a necessary and sufficient condition for moral intercourse, so pedophilia is wrong not intrinsically but contingently, because children are deemed unable to give consent. (Or bestiality: animals are deemed unable to give consent. We regularly use animals for food, labor, and companionship against their consent however, so it is unclear why consent alone should bar us from using them for sex. The reason we should not engage them in intercourse is rather that it is in intrinsic opposition to our natural ends as humans and theirs as non-humans.):
I think for many non-believers – as regards both pedophilia and bestiality – there’s the notion that, insofar as these actions constitute non-consensual sex – really a euphemism for rape – they are inflicting some form of psychological damage or trauma on the recipient. Regarding animals, I suppose it’s debatable to what extent such rape would be psychologically traumatic – given that the psychological constitution of other mammals is debatable --and it may be that we are anthropomorphizing here, or projecting our mental states onto animals. We take a likewise conservative stance regarding children, not accepting the argument that young children may not realize what is happening and thus may not be traumatized by it. It seems generally agreed that, at least in the case of children (if not animals), even a buried memory will be a source of trauma – will leave psychological scars – even when the traumatic nature of the experience was not – or, perhaps,
could not-- be fully experienced in the moment.
But an important reality of the matter that most people – regardless of their religious beliefs or moral orientation – simply are not attracted, sexually, to animals or to children, and most even feel a certain visceral disgust at the very idea of it, a disgust which may indeed be “natural” to them and not merely socially conditioned. The same goes, for that matter, for homosexuality – the majority of individuals seemingly do not struggle with homosexual desires, and many – indeed – experience a certain visceral distaste at the idea (just as many homosexuals have reported experiencing a visceral distaste, if not disgust, at the idea of sexual relations with those
not of their own gender; though the complexity is that many experience a certain visceral disgust, or at least ambivalence, regarding sexuality,
period, like those who feel sickened at the sight of public displays of affection).
But the moral question becomes, for the minority that
does desire what most of us do not desire – and what most of us, frankly, would view with varying degrees of distaste or even revulsion – is, “it morally permissible?” And that’s where the notion of consent enters in – a loaded term which, as mentioned, implies rape and, presumably, great psychological suffering (humiliation, mental confusion, sadness and depression) and, of course, potentially non-consensual physical suffering, as well (alas, with animals and children, there is often the factor of unwanted grave bodily harm, as well).
Regarding the disgust itself, a believer might say that the disgust is there – for example, regarding bestiality – precisely
because such behavior is unnatural, and immoral. Some may even say that God wired us that way, to clue us in that there is something wrong there (though this notion is ultimately unsatisfactory, since a homosexual with a disgust for heterosexual sex would be considered to have the “wrong” desire – thus, intrinsic desire would not be a clue in
his case – and a desire not to hug a leper, who may have running sores or a foul odor, would not be considered a clue that hugging a leper is “unnatural” and, therefore, immoral).
A non-believer likely would say that the disgust is there because such desires have a zero-sum value - or even negative value-- from an evolutionary standpoint (non-reproductive sex serves no evolutionary purpose). But they would, nonetheless, not ascribe to that sense of visceral disgust – or even to the idea that a certain behavior, such as non-reproductive sex, serves no evolutionary purpose – a moral significance (though saying non-reproductive sex serves no evolutionary purpose is itself debatable, as it is assuming that the purpose must be of a specific reproductive nature and cannot be of a psychological or social – or of a more diffuse – nature).
