In the Blogless Lepolt entry I made yesterday, I complained about being treated as a bigot for holding a rationally-derived intelligent position on a subject that happens to be in concert with the majority view but presently categorized as politically incorrect by those who argue otherwise. This is not a full exposition of any of that, but it will point those who are still uncertain to the essence of the topic. It is something I wrote intending it as a series of Facebook posts to an individual who made an argument on the subject, which ultimately I decided to send him as a series of private messages, and then decided to post here for a larger audience. I’m not sure how it will be taken, or how large an audience I might get, but here is a slightly edited (to remove personal references) version of what I sent him.
The point made was that homosexual behavior has been observed in animals, and is therefore as natural as heterosexual behavior. I have three objections to this.
First, although it might be that I simply don’t have that information, it is not my impression that there has ever been demonstrated to be a homosexual preference in any animal. There have been instances of promiscuous conduct which include homosexual acts, but those individual animals engaging in such acts do so for simple gratification and engage with equal eagerness in heterosexual acts. Thus we might argue that for some animals indiscriminate promiscuity is natural; that does not prove that homosexual preference is natural. As I admit, though, it might be that there is data outside my knowledge. This is why I have two more points, because on some level this first one is irrelevant.
Second, the fact that there is homosexual conduct among animals, even were it demonstrated that there is a homosexual preference involved in some cases, does not mean that it is “natural” in the sense most people mean by that, that is, that they were born that way. I believe that persons identifying as homosexual have genuine feelings based on brain and body chemistry that are in that sense as “real” and “natural” as heterosexual feelings. What I do not believe is that they were born that way. The nature/nurture argument will probably not be resolved in our lifetime, but I think that homosexual feelings are induced by environmental factors, and have elsewhere explained how our sexual feelings and secondary related feelings of bonding can become attached to any object by reinforced association. I would agree that the feelings self-identified homosexuals have are in that sense “natural”, caused by natural factors, and as “natural” as those of heterosexuals–and of pedophiles, bestialists, necrophiles, and fetishists. I further consider it not only possible but entirely likely that similar environmental factors could induce similar “natural” “feelings” in animals, such that they associated sexual gratification with same-sex objects (or with any other object; I knew a dog once who was very protective of his wedded pillows). I see no reason why such an association should not result in whatever bonding occurs among other species that is analogous to our love and commitment relationships. Saying it occurs naturally does not mean it is not a sickness. The acts of masochists, sadists, nymphomaniacs, and indeed of keptomaniacs, pyromaniacs, and sociopathic killers are all in that sense “natural”; that does not mean we accept them as “normal”.
Third, it is not our practice to base what is right for human culture on the conduct of animals. Within the sexual realm alone, animals are known to commit rape; to have sex with pre-pubescent females; to have sex with members of their own immediate genetic families; to kill their mates as part of their pleasuring; to kill other creatures as part of their sexual activity; to have sex with animals of other species; to engage in indiscriminate coupling. It might thus be argued that these are all “natural” expressions of sexuality. That does not mean that we as humans wish to allow them to be recognized as normative for humans. We make laws concerning the social order in order to promote the social order that we, the majority of society, wish to establish as normative. If we, the majority of human beings in this society, believe that homosexuality is an abberant psychosexual condition afflicting some, even if we are persuaded that it cannot be cured or that no cure should be imposed on any who do not seek it, and we wish to arrange our social order such that our children recognize a difference between homosexual relationships which we wish to discourage and heterosexual relationships which we wish to encourage, that is a matter of policy and not a matter of bigotry. After all, on some level (even evolutionary scientists would admit this) the reason heterosexual couples have natural children is so that they will have natural grandchildren and natural progeny into the distant future, preserving their genome as part of the racial genome in perpetuity. That heterosexuals wish their children to be taught that heterosexuality is normative and homosexuality abberant so that they will mature expecting to fulfill their role in providing descendants for their ancestors is a perfectly reasonable policy decision, a decision concerning what kind of society we would prefer to leave for the future.
This has very little, ultimately, to do with the question of homosexual marriage. Obviously, the last point is related, because it suggests that it might be a matter of public policy whether homosexuality ought to be validated and thus encouraged as equal in stature to heterosexuality as a matter of social policy. My objections to the legalization of homosexual marriage, though, have little to do with that, and are based primarily on a question of valid state interest: the state has a right to regulate heterosexual sexual conduct because the state has a right to protect the children produced by such relationships, and therefore the state has a right to regulate the rules applying the relationship between the parents. It will do so conveniently through marriage or inconveniently through family court proceedings and collection of child support from unwed fathers. No such right to regulate the relationships between homosexual lovers exists, and homosexuals ought to be embarrassed that they are trying to get their relationships regulated after having fought long and hard to get them declared out-of-bounds for legal regulation. That, though, is not the same issue as whether such relationships can be called “natural” by any meaning of the word, or whether in the sense that they are “natural” we ought to embrace them as “normative”.
