If you were to stop and think about it for one second, every piece of information we learn about the relationship Pokémon have with humans in the world of Pokémon is made to suggest a far deeper relationship than we have in our world with animals. Just the mere notion alone that any and every type of creature has the potential to be just as, if not more, intelligent than an average human being is one thing, Pokémon are even allowed to hold jobs in the Pokémon world, being allowed to become cooks, doctors, laborers, and so on; but the fact that there are several factors to suggest Pokémon fully understand human speech (Pokémon obeying complex commands without any training, Pokémon speaking a full "language" of their own, Pokémon being capable of speaking human language), the fact that Pokémon don't need to obey anyone if they don't want to and Pokéballs are nothing more than a glorified carriage (Pokémon can leave Pokéballs on their own, Pokémon can leave their trainers on their own in the anime, Pokémon are free to disobey orders if they choose), and the fact that human-Pokémon relationships have always been suggested to be closer than animal-human (Human-Pokémon marriage isn't looked down upon, several instances of random people showing attraction to Pokémon) can only lead to the belief that, within the world of Pokémon, there is nothing wrong with a human-Pokémon relationship. To use something silly like "B-But they eat out of a bowl" when a lot of Pokémon are simply physically incapable of sitting at a human table and eating with cutlery to try to invalidate everything else which suggests they are at LEAST human-level intelligence and social standing is absurd. I imagine anti-pokephiles in the world Pokémon are seen as the same level as racial purists, and that there are all sort of anti-discriminatory laws against it.