Or let me put it that way: The analogy is bad if you apply your moral codex. The analogy is good if you consider it a statement that is as bad as the headline in our moral codex, but from their point of view. This is the thinking step you should apply. And that's where the analogy comes from.
The injunctions for illegality and immorality you cite for the Muslim world apply equally to those for Christianity of course.
Reading https://info.publicintelligence.net/HTT-PashtunSexuality.pdf there seems to be a problem for men not being allowed to see the face of potential mates; is this custom associated with Islam or not? Catholic priests are not allowed to marry. What are they supposed to do with their sexual impulses. We know the unconvincing answer.
Well, that's a digression on to a different topic. There's no law in traditional Islamic jurisprudence that requires wearing a veil, only modest forms of dress, and in fact it was not a common practice in the earliest history of Islam. Veils for women were adopted in later Islamic ruling courts as a fashion copied from Byzantium, as Greek women had worn veils since ancient times. Of course if you ask people in Afghanistan why they wear veils they will invoke Islam, but historically that's not the whole story.
In case that's taken in a pejorative sense, as a Christian I have to accept that many of the practices in Christianity have accumulated through later history in the same way. That's just how tradition and culture work.
Eating pork is as much abuse as is abusing little children, or even more, as the animal is brutally killed, a thinking, living being. You cannot just put animal rights aside like that, this is probably along the lines people who abuse children are thinking, that it is their right to abuse children, like the western world thinks "It is our right to kill, slaughter and eat animals".
Maybe if we wouldn't think that we can just raise, kill and eat other living, conscious, thinking, feeling beings, just like we are, all the time, then we would have less abuse of ourselves too?
Compassion goes a long way. If we cannot have compassion to other living beings inhabiting this planet, how can we have compassion to other people inhabiting this planet. Can you see the analogy ?
And if you're making the comparison to intelligence as being the factor that limits what we should eat and kill, then I can remind that it has been studied that pigs are as intelligent or even more intelligent than dogs even. Now, what do you think such intelligent beings are thinking when they are being held captive and tortured in their poor living conditions, just to be force fed, force breeded and then violently killed just to fill our bellies ?
You've done a disservice to vegans and vegetarians, everywhere.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
I know and realize this is a stupid argument to have, especially on Hacker News, but if people are ready to make arguments about the subject that animals have no right, on a certain level we are ready to make the argument that maybe foreigners or "lower level people" as many tend to think don't have the same right to live. You see the connection I'm trying to make ?
Animal rights aside (because that has nothing to do with the restriction of pork), only the person eating pork is harmed. When Americans consume pork, it doesn't harm the Afghans who don't consume pork. Meaning, everyone eating pork is freely volunteering to do so. No one involved in eating of pork is involved against their will. Whatever the punishment might be in the afterlife, it only involves those who consume pork. In a sense, it's a victimless crime. Again, putting animal rights aside.
However, having sex with young boys involves the unwilling young boy. There is a victim that needs protection here.