“The discovery that biology plays a role in sexuality
also has at least one obvious benefit.
It demolishes a key plank of homophobia
-
the argument that being gay is unnatural or a matter of personal choice.
Individuals, it seems, have little more control over their orientation
than
skin colour or who their mother was.”
Biology shows that homosexuality is as
natural as the colour of your skin, Mark Henderson, Times science correspondent, The Times
[London (UK)] 16 Oct 2004: 4.
Victim -v- No Victim
Sex between an adult and a child is assumed to be
non-consensual; the child is therefore a victim. Thus this activity is
considered to be a criminal act on the part of the adult.
There are no victims in consensual sex between adults,
regardless of their gender. This private, personal activity is not the business
of anyone else including politicians and law-makers.
First- and
second-class citizens
As long as ‘civil union’ confers fewer rights and benefits
compared to marriage, it cannot be moral or fair to discriminate against any couple,
forcing them to accept a ‘second-best’ civil union.
Sexual orientation
There is now considerable evidence that pre-natal
development and in-utero conditions can affect an individual’s gender identity
and sexual orientation and that once ‘set’, sexual orientation is not
malleable. While the influence of ‘nurture’ can’t be discounted, it seems
evident that homosexuality is usually not a ‘lifestyle choice’ but an inbuilt
characteristic.
Evolution and
homosexuality
There are many ‘traits’ that continue to be expressed even
though they may not contribute to the survival of an individual or group: attached
earlobes, blue eyes, left-handedness, colour blindness, myopia, albinism, diabetes,
haemophilia, cystic fibrosis, etc.
While same-gender sex is not capable of producing offspring,
same-gender sexual orientation (which is not a disability) does not make an
individual incapable of breeding.
Christian objections
Most resistance to homosexuality seems to be based on
religion.
I’m not going to discuss any religions here except for
christianity because it’s the only belief system I know enough about.
While the bible appears to prohibit ‘same gender’ sex (mainly
male-male, since it has less to say on female-female sex), especially in the (now apparently superceded) old testament, no attempt seems to have been made to give reasons or justifications for the
prohibition.
Why? Were there NO good reasons? Were there reasons but
god omitted to say what they were? Or did the people who were supposed to write
them down forget to do so? Or perhaps they thought they weren’t important?
For a deity to call a behaviour an ‘abomination’ but not state why is
odd, dictatorial and oppressive and to treat one’s followers like children, slaves or imbeciles.
In generations past parents who wanted to protect their
children from harm might have thought it was too complicated to say to a child,
“Don’t wander outside the camp because there might be wild animals that will
kill and eat you. Or you might eat the wrong berries and be poisoned. Or people
from another tribe who may steal you. Or you may fall down a crevasse and be
killed.”
So, because the child needs to be frightened into safety, they
might have said, “Don’t go outside the camp because the Boogey Man will get
you.”
This will work until the child has sufficient reasoning
power to understand that there is no Boogey Man but forgives his/her parents for
the lie because it’s understood that the parent was just trying to keep a young
child safe.
For a god to prohibit behaviour without giving reasons is the same as saying "Behave yourselves or the Boogey Man will get you!". It’s treating apparently mature, thinking,
rational adults like infants or morons.
That might be OK with you but it’s not OK with me. And it shouldn't be OK with you either.
So what could have been (your) god’s unstated ‘reasons’ for
prohibiting homosexuality?
1: It’s not ‘natural’ or it’s ‘wrong’
That doesn’t stack up. If god thought homosexuality was
wrong it would be a rational to assume that no homosexual behaviour would be
found in any animals species. Yet it’s found across many species and unbiased
research (i.e. that which looks for facts rather than seeking to support a
particular point of view) will demonstrate this to be so.
See Homosexual Behaviour in Animals reference
below.
If the claim is to be made, though, that homosexuality is considered to be ‘wrong’ because it is
'unnatural', then marriage must also be considered ‘wrong’. While sexual
intercourse is undoubtedly natural, the joining together of two people by
ceremony must be considered to be a comparatively late development in human history and entirely
of human invention, mainly to ensure inheritance, alliances and the genetic lineage of one's offspring. And as a mere human-designed 'contract' it cannot be 'natural' and therefore must be 'wrong'.
By the same reasoning, monogamy - clinging to one's spouse and 'forsaking all others' - must also be considered to be 'wrong' because it is clearly not natural. If it were there would be no need for the bible to specifically prohibit adultery or to warn a man against coveting his neighbour's wife. Divorce would be unheard of because no-one would would sexually stray outside their marriage and there would be no need for a promise of fidelity in a marriage ceremony.
2: It leads to sexually transmissible disease
It can. But first, why not say so and, secondly, is anyone claiming that these diseases can't also
be contracted through heterosexual sex?
3: It distracts men from women
This is more rational. But why all the nonsense about 'abomination'? Possibly because the bronze age desert-dwellers who wrote the bible tended to treat their readers like children and this was the Boogey Man they needed to get compliance.
There are two main reasons why an old testament tribe needed men to fully occupy themselves with 'servicing' their women folk to keep them pumping out babies and ensuring they had enough food to survive on:
# There is strength in numbers and
# If, in old testament times, infant mortality was a problem
(and given the lack of biblical instruction with regard hygiene it probably was),
then quickly replacing the babies that died was important.
The
old testament is full of stories of ‘god’s chosen people’ taking over land
belonging to other tribes. Only by force of numbers could they ensure holding
on to that ‘stolen’ land.
Having large families might have been desirable in old
testament times, for the newly-formed christian sect and for families needing
children to work on the land to provide enough food. It’s no longer fine when
the world is struggling to feed its present population.
We have reached a point in human history when heterosexual sex seems like the problem!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Homosexual Behaviour
in Animals; An Evolutionary
Perspective
Edited by: Volker Sommer, University College London / Edited by: Paul L.
Vasey, University of Lethbridge, Alberta
ISBN: 9780521864466, Publication
date: July 2006
Description: Behavioural
observations from both the field and captivity indicate that same-sex sexual
interactions are widespread throughout the animal kingdom, and occur quite
frequently in certain non-human species. Proximate studies of these phenomena
have yielded important insights into genetic, hormonal and neural correlates.
In contrast, there has been a relative paucity of research on the evolutionary
aspects. Homosexual Behaviour in Animals is a 2006 text which seeks to redress
this imbalance by exploring animal same-sex sexual behaviour from an
evolutionary perspective. Contributions focus on animals that routinely engage
in homosexual behaviour and include birds, dolphin, deer, bison and cats, as
well as monkeys and apes, such as macaques, gorillas and bonobos. A final
chapter looks at human primates.
