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Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

Well that escalated quickly.

I was thinking more along the lines of not being too harsh on those with more 'traditional values'. Like our Muslim neighbours, or those who think women should stay at home, or maybe are uncomfortable with modern ideas of gender and sexuality.

Not sure I'd throw in paedophilia (since minors are unable to legally consent to sex with adults), or bestiality (animals definitely can't consent to that), or incest (if it results in a child it can have severe consequences for said child).

Regardless, while it's great that we now recognize people of other races are equal (at least nominally), we shouldn't be too smug when denouncing others who aren't as 'progressive' as we are (see all the propaganda regarding homosexuality in Russia - where it's actually legal; versus India where same sex relations are illegal).

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>Not sure I'd throw in paedophilia (since minors are unable to legally consent to sex with adults), or bestiality (animals definitely can't consent to that), or incest (if it results in a child it can have severe consequences for said child).

I don't remember asking the cow if it wanted to be made into a burger.

Also, we don't ban those with genetic disorders from having children. We educate them and try to help them, but we ban them.

As for the first one, it is a harder topic to deal with, but look at the things we ban that don't hurt children that could potentially serve as a substitute.

Traditional conservative values are relative. Western women are forbidden from going topless in public even though men are allowed. They also can't show their pubic hair but can show their head hair. The differences seem kind of arbitrary.

Pedophilia as a sexuality is harmless. It's only a desire. We shouldn't assume all pedophiles have had sex with children. Probably the vast majority haven't.

Consent isn't so meaningful when it comes to animals. Females of some species don't consent - they're forced to have sex by the males of their own species (walrusses I think). So clearly consent isn't actually something we require from animals. As Lawton said, we do far worse things than rape. We torture dogs by locking them in solitary confinement for most of their life. We of course kill animals just for fun. It's hard to imagine that rape (assuming you can't measure consent somehow) can be worse than psychological torture and murder combined.

Harm to children isn't why we don't like incest, otherwise we'd be banning people with even minor genetic problems from having children (heart disease risk, low IQ, etc). We don't like incest because it's a weird sexual deviancy which repulses us just like homosexuality does to many people.

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