Why Homosexuality is Completely Natural
By: Anthony Conwright
I found myself in a battle of wits with a formidable opponent a few nights ago. The bout was over whether or not homosexuality was natural or unnatural. My personal stance is that homosexuality is completely natural and poses no threat to the future of I hope by the end of this brief piece you come to understand why. I have many examples of why homosexuality is natural but I will only list three. I will attach a more detailed piece on this issue in the near future.
The conversation started out by talking to Jamie (a fictitious name made up for privacy) about Gay Pride and why I support the full extension of equal rights to the LBGT community. Jamie asserted that people living a homosexual lifestyle cannot be expected to be treated the same as people living the heterosexual lifestyle because they are different. It became my duty to convince Jamie that the difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals is no more significant than the difference between brunettes and blondes or skin color and eye color. The actual debate began once Jamie said, “We are the only species that does that,” however there exists a beautiful array of evidence the shows quite the contrary.
In Bruce Bagemihl’s book, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, there are many examples of species that exhibit homosexual behavior. One of the examples in the book is illustrated by bonobos. Bonobos are part of the Great Apes along with: chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutan, and humans. Bonobs are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, as they share 98% of our DNA. Bonobos have a black face. They are also known for their long arms, long legs and for having a smaller head than the common chimpanzee. Female bonobos engage in a form of mutual genital stimulation that is known as GG-Rubbing. One female mounts herself on top of another female, the female on the bottom then wraps her legs around the female on top and they begin to rub their genitals against one another as a way to directly stimulate each other’s clitoris. Male bonobos also display a similar form of GG-Rubbing. According to Biological Exuberance: One male lies on his back and spreads his legs while the other thrusts on him, rubbing their erections together. (It is also important to note that there is no anal penetration involved in bonobo homosexual activity).
Jamie, a creationist, had questions about how humans would have received a gene from our ancestors from Africa. The clues that question can be found by looking at our own genetic makeup. There are genetic plenty of clues that lead to homosexuality being a preference you are born with, however there is no single “gay gene.” A gene for being more aggressive, or having a certain color eyes, let’s say blue, may need certain conditions to manifest itself. Evolutionary Biologist, Richard Dawkins, tells us that genes are not that deterministic. According to Dawkins, “When we talk about a gene for something, a gene for anything, a gene for x…It doesn’t always have to be a gene for that thing. It’s a gene for that thing under the right environmental conditions.” As a way to explain the way a “gay-gene” would have preserved itself and manifest itself, Dawkins gives the example of a hypothetical situation such as bottle-feeding, “Suppose bottle-feeding is the environmental circumstance that means that the gay gene would manifest itself in gay behavior, but if you are breast-fed it doesn’t. Before bottles were invented, that means the gay gene would never have manifested itself in gay behavior at all. It could have manifested itself in another way such as being able to track prey better. Once bottle-feeding was introduced it changes the manifestation of the gene. Dawkins says, “This theory is saying that there is no such thing as the gay gene. There is the gay gene given that the cultural or environmental circumstances are right.”
Homosexuality is not a form of sex; it is a form of love. There is no such thing as “gay sex.” Any straight man or woman that opposes this idea, in hopes to keep the sanctity of their heterosexual identification in tact, should remove oral sex, anal sex and vaginal sex from their sexual diets. A person that identifies him or herself as being part of the homosexual community can participate in the same sexual activities as someone that indentifies himself or herself as being heterosexual. This is great news for the people that believe homosexuality will undoubtedly lead to the extinction of our species. If every man or woman on earth identified as being gay or lesbian, they still can produce offspring.
I suppose that scientific evidence that explains why someone was born homosexual would put a lot of the population at ease. It could be possible that a scientific explanation of why someone is homosexual would put Prop 8 supporters at ease. The scientific evidence could make homosexuals find security in feeling that there was a choice to be made in terms of their sexual preference. But, does it really matter if there is a scientific explanation for homosexuality? To suggest that there is something so vile about homosexuality that warrants a scientific investigation is, in my opinion, degrading. We don’t justify our skin color, eye color, or heterosexuality. Pure equality develops from the ideal that any man or woman can be who they want to be without explanation.
Black and Wordy 