Well, gay "marriage" works for penguins...

shanek

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/a...ex=1391490000&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=all

Free registration, blah blah blah.

Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan, are completely devoted to each other. For nearly six years now, they have been inseparable. They exhibit what in penguin parlance is called "ecstatic behavior": that is, they entwine their necks, they vocalize to each other, they have sex. Silo and Roy are, to anthropomorphize a bit, gay penguins. When offered female companionship, they have adamantly refused it. And the females aren't interested in them, either.

At one time, the two seemed so desperate to incubate an egg together that they put a rock in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds of their abdomens, said their chief keeper, Rob Gramzay. Finally, he gave them a fertile egg that needed care to hatch. Things went perfectly. Roy and Silo sat on it for the typical 34 days until a chick, Tango, was born. For the next two and a half months they raised Tango, keeping her warm and feeding her food from their beaks until she could go out into the world on her own. Mr. Gramzay is full of praise for them.

"They did a great job," he said.
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Roy and Silo are hardly unusual. Milou and Squawk, two young males, are also beginning to exhibit courtship behavior, hanging out with each other, billing and bowing. Before them, the Central Park Zoo had Georgey and Mickey, two female Gentoo penguins who tried to incubate eggs together. And Wendell and Cass, a devoted male African penguin pair, live at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island. Indeed, scientists have found homosexual behavior throughout the animal world.
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And it's not just penguins, either:

Among birds, for instance, studies show that 10 to 15 percent of female western gulls in some populations in the wild are homosexual. Females perform courtship rituals, like tossing their heads at each other or offering small gifts of food to each other, and they establish nests together. Occasionally they mate with males and produce fertile eggs but then return to their original same-sex partners. Their bonds, too, may persist for years.

Among mammals, male and female bottlenose dolphins frequently engage in homosexual activity, both in captivity and in the wild. Homosexuality is particularly common among young male dolphin calves. One male may protect another that is resting or healing from wounds inflicted by a predator. When one partner dies, the other may search for a new male mate. Researchers have noted that in some cases same-sex behavior is more common for dolphins in captivity.

Male and female rhesus macaques, a type of monkey, also exhibit homosexuality in captivity and in the wild. Males are affectionate to each other, touching, holding and embracing. Females smack their lips at each other and play games like hide-and-seek, peek-a-boo and follow the leader. And both sexes mount members of their own sex.
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What the animal studies do show, Ms. Zuk observed, is that "sexuality is a lot broader term than people want to think."

"You have this idea that the animal kingdom is strict, old-fashioned Roman Catholic," she said, "that they have sex just to procreate."

In bonobos, she noted, "you see expressions of sex outside the period when females are fertile. Suddenly you are beginning to see that sex is not necessarily about reproduction."

"Sexual expression means more than making babies," Ms. Zuk said. "Why are we surprised? People are animals."
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So, with all of this evidence, how can anyone go about saying that homosexuality is "unnatural," or "against God" (didn't God create the animals, too, according to Judeo-Christian beliefs? And animals did not have a fall into sin, so how could homosexuality be against God or be sinful?), or that sex only exists for purposes of procreation?

I'd be interested to hear how the "moralists" respond to this evidence.
 
shanek said:
And animals did not have a fall into sin, so how could homosexuality be against God or be sinful?

...

I'd be interested to hear how the "moralists" respond to this evidence.
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Well, I had a couple of nights ago a conversation with one of the rare Finnish fundamentalist Christians and this very same argument came up then.

The answer: everything bad you see in the animal kingdom is the result of man's fall into sin.

The idea is that the perfect world where Beagles and Bunnies lay together in peace was destroyed when Eve took the fruit and after that evil entered into animalkind.
 
geni said:
Pretty easy to find out there is a thread on this over at RR somewhere about a week old.

edit

link to the thread

http://www.rr-bb.com/showthread.php?threadid=130659
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Ermm..interesting comments. Especially about the possibility of zoo keepers "warping" the animals. Like they haven't got better things to do than to deliberately train queer penguins...

I guess people there didn't read the article either

Hmmm....well

When I was a kid I remember my cat eating her first litter of kittens (very disturbing)...so are we to use cases such as these for justification of cannabalism?
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From the article:

Still, scientists warn about drawing conclusions about humans. "For some people, what animals do is a yardstick of what is and isn't natural," Mr. Vasey said. "They make a leap from saying if it's natural, it's morally and ethically desirable."

But he added: "Infanticide is widespread in the animal kingdom. To jump from that to say it is desirable makes no sense. We shouldn't be using animals to craft moral and social policies for the kinds of human societies we want to live in. Animals don't take care of the elderly. I don't particularly think that should be a platform for closing down nursing homes."
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Or the naturalistic fallacy: just because something is natural doesn't make it moral, just because something is unnatural doesn't make it immoral.
 
I'd be interested to hear how the "moralists" respond to this evidence.

I don’t consider myself a “moralist” nor do I care whom people choose to sleep with, but you have yet to provide any “evidence” only an article filled with wild speculation based mostly on a book of wild speculation.

I have yet to see any concrete evidence that any animals are gay that stands up to even gentle scrutiny. Anthropomorphizing animals and willfully misinterpreting ordinary bonding and social behaviors as “gay” is not the way to win people over to a point of view or cause.

Among birds, for instance, studies show that 10 to 15 percent of female western gulls in some populations in the wild are homosexual. Females perform courtship rituals, like tossing their heads at each other or offering small gifts of food to each other, and they establish nests together. Occasionally they mate with males and produce fertile eggs but then return to their original same-sex partners. Their bonds, too, may persist for years.

The author of the poorly researched book cited in the article throws out this nonsense and ignores basic animal behavior. Yes those gulls do occasionally form same sex pairs, but it is for the benefit of the species. Their drive to perpetuate the species prevents them from being “old maids”.

In certain times, when there are not enough males to mate with the females, the females will form pairs, not for sexual gratification, but because they are programmed to perpetuate the species. They must do so because two parent families are a necessity in gull communities; you must have a pair of birds to successfully hatch and raise the chicks. One has to stay with the eggs for warmth and protection against predators while the other obtains food. The courtship rituals are simply incidental to their drive to perpetuate their kind. When the male to female ratio improves, guess what? The females leave their “gull friends” and mate with males (sorry, couldn’t help it).

Simple, biological, explanation.
 
Hmmm..... Gay penguins and other animals.

Does that mean that homo milk really does come from a gay cow?
 
Re: Re: Well, gay "marriage" works for penguins...

LW said:


Well, I had a couple of nights ago a conversation with one of the rare Finnish fundamentalist Christians and this very same argument came up then.

The answer: everything bad you see in the animal kingdom is the result of man's fall into sin.

The idea is that the perfect world where Beagles and Bunnies lay together in peace was destroyed when Eve took the fruit and after that evil entered into animalkind.
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I see. And the biblical support for this is...?
 
So, both in this thread and the other one cited from the RR board, the response of the "moralists" (notice how I keep putting that in quotes?) is either steadfast denial, No True Scotsman, begging the question, or any other of a number of fallacious and even dishonest responses.

Figures...
 
Demigorgon said:
Odds are good that freaks of nature just don't happen in humans.
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Like being left-handed? Or two s.d. from the mean in height?
 
shanek said:
So, both in this thread and the other one cited from the RR board, the response of the "moralists" (notice how I keep putting that in quotes?) is either steadfast denial, No True Scotsman, begging the question, or any other of a number of fallacious and even dishonest responses.

Figures...
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Actually, it's more of straight strawman, in that if it happens in nature, it must be "morally acceptable." No one ever said that.

The point is that if it happens in other animals, then there is no justification for the claim that it is only a "lifestyle choice."
 
This month's Maxim magazine has an article on gay manatees or something...
 
Snide said:
Like being left-handed? Or two s.d. from the mean in height?
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And, many animals care for their young; does that make them "freaks"? Many animals care for their young; does that make them "freaks"? What behavior of animals and humans is "freakish"?

They're just defining it the way they WANT to define it. They bring up things like infanticide, hoping we won't notice that infanticide is a violent act that directly harms others but homosexuality isn't. In fact, as the article shows, homosexuality can provide a nurturing environment for those who wouldn't otherwise have one.
 
Zero said:
This month's Maxim magazine has an article on gay manatees or something...
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If it is in Maxim, you can bet that they are lesbian manatees.... Hot wet lesbian manatees....
 
Thanz said:

If it is in Maxim, you can bet that they are lesbian manatees.... Hot wet lesbian manatees....
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That's just wrong, dude...
 
pgwenthold said:
The point is that if it happens in other animals, then there is no justification for the claim that it is only a "lifestyle choice."
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I personally wouldn't claim that it is a lifestyle choice, but out of curiosity, how does the fact that a behavior occurs in other animals remove all justification for the claim that analogous human behavior might be a "lifestyle choice"? Animal behaviors that we would analogize to adultery, thievery and murder are frequently observed in nature, but no one would conclude from this fact alone that human adulterers, thieves and murderers have not made "lifestyle choices".
 
ceo_esq said:
I personally wouldn't claim that it is a lifestyle choice, but out of curiosity, how does the fact that a behavior occurs in other animals remove all justification for the claim that analogous human behavior might be a "lifestyle choice"? Animal behaviors that we would analogize to adultery, thievery and murder are frequently observed in nature, but no one would conclude from this fact alone that human adulterers, thieves and murderers have not made "lifestyle choices".
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Again, you're comparing homosexuality to behavior that directly harms others. You're comparing apples and accordions.
 
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