Monday, July 24, 2006
So There! (450 Gay Species)
There's nothing like enjoying the Wit of the Fundie Right when they har-har about it being Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. "It ain't Natural," they scold. Ah, nature. According to the June/July issue of Seed, 450 species of vertibrates have been identified as practicing homosexual behavior in the wild. According to Joan Roughgarden, professor of biology at Stanford University and author of Evolution's Rainbow, a new explanation of sexual behavior is in order. The evidence indicates that mating isn't only about multiplying; animals also have sex for fun and for formalizing social bonds. Male big horn sheep, giraffes, killer whales, grey whales, and bottlenose dolphins all engage in all-male orgies. Japanese macaques and bonobos are enthusiastic lesbians.
The list of species exhibiting homosexual behavior includes buffalo and bison, gray seals, squirrels, herons, and wolves. Dogs and cats, bunnies and duckies. Now I know why the laughing gull is laughing. Now I know what the blowfly blows.
In nature the sexual spectrum is less binary, more a continuum. Roughgarden sees the hetero-and homosexual distinctions as cultural creations rather than biological fact. Roughgarden predicts that our own dichotomies will break down further in the next 50 years.
Not if Dubya's base has anything to say about it, of course. It's going to be interesting to see how much longer his successors will remain in thrall to the shrill perspectives of that group.
In the meantime, get a copy of Seed and check out the exhaustive list of your new brothers and sisters! Bears and belugas, koalas and kestrels, walrus and wallaby share the love that dares not speak its name!
# posted by Lulu Maude @ 6:46 PM 
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How filthy! Can we safely assume that this perversely named "Seed" magazine is mailed in a plain brown wrapper?
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