Thread:Comments:French Senate vote in support of same-sex marriage/Redefining "marriage" silences ideas that the queer community finds inconvenient./reply (3)

Okay, I shall play along.

I believe all of the sexual behaviours that you list are acceptable except paedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia. In the case of paedophilia, children are unable to consent to sexual behaviour and are thus trivially exploitable by adults. I believe that the animal involved in a bestiality encounter is unable to have informed consent for sex, and it is thus possible to cause pain for the animal. Necrophilia is a weird one: it is theoretically possible that a system of legalised necrophilia could be set up that would allow for people to consent to posthumous sexual activity, but given the social ickiness that most people have towards necrophilia, it would be unlikely that such a system could be plausibly setup, so the forbidding of that type of relationship is quite reasonable. We generally allow people some say in the disposal of their body after death (including honouring preferences for the religious or secular nature of funerals, whether organ donation is conducted, whether a person is buried or cremated or donated to medical science (etc.). Most people are disgusted by the idea of necrophilia and would thus not consent to necrophilia being performed on their body after their death.

It is my view that any sexual activity where all partners consensually participate is morally acceptable. Therefore, masturbation is morally acceptable (because if you do not wish to participate, you simply abstain). All adult relations whether straight or gay are morally acceptable if they are conducted consensually. In the case of polygamy or other situations: if one has entered into an exclusive monogamous relationship with a partner, it would be wrong to break that commitment. (It would be inadvisable to enter such a commitment if you are reasonably sure that you may break it at some future point.) I reject the idea that sadomasochism is "violent". There are physical sensations that are similar in type to those that are done as part of a crime. But we do the same in sport: great physical pain can be caused playing a game like rugby, and great physical pain can be caused through doing sadomasochism wrong. But in neither sport nor sadomasochism are people being violent, they are just causing physical sensations that may be painful. We can see that it isn't pain that sadomasochists are seeking: nobody gets sexually turned on by getting their hand caught in a car door.

I reject the idea that "queer" covers anything that doesn't fit some kind of "marriage norm". Masturbation certainly isn't "queer" in the sense that "queer" is used to refer to by the LGBT community. You may be using the term "queer" in rather a queer and unorthodox way, so if we are to continue this discussion, you may wish to define what backing and normative force you have for the designation of some sexual practice as queer and others as not queer.