A rather poor set of suspects to trot out as an example of anything realted to humans.

Perhaps he had a secret meeting with Dobson from FOTF, where he was given 10000000000000000$ in cash, under the table, to pretend that he’s ex-gay.

Maybe ex-gay-watch will report on this in the future.

I think Wayne Besen better start making his rounds at gay bars…maybe he may catch him with his pants/feathers…

Oh wait,

he’s a penguin, never mind

Is homosexuality “OK” — from a biological or personal viewpoint then, yes it is “OK”. I have no idea what you hold as far as religious belief goes. I’m not sure, other than idle curiosity, how much I should even be interested in what your beliefs are.

From a biological perspective, aggression is well explained (as is infanticide) in circumstances of survival. Cannibalism appears to be different, as most occurs as part of religious or cultural ritual among people who aren’t hungry.

As for you sleeping around on your partner — which is different to polygamy — I can only suggest you don’t need the advice of others. Biology does indeed draw both men and women as a whole to seek sex in many and varied ways, but your own relationships with a person you love (and who loves and trusts you in return) may suffer if you do so.

Then there is a basic biological inheritance for cannibalism, aggression and infanticide/infant-abandonment. Sexual orientation is not something special (not that you were saying that, of course).

Ultimately, everything has a biological basis. I can speak because I have the acoustic biology necessary. I can think because I have a biological organ called a brain.

Moreover, I have a desire to cheat on my wife because, well, polygamy is observed in both animals and humans, and thus, according to your logic (which I don’t necessarily disagree with) it must be biologically based.

Is it okay?

Exactly CK — I was hoping someone would make that claim directly, but we can now pick up from here 🙂

The fact that same-sex couples are observed to pair-bond in the same way and for the same observed reasons that opposite-sex couples do — among either humans or animals, it seems — makes discussion about “sin” or “God’s Will” or “choice” or “broken humanity” appear as ridiculous as calling it “clever social sexual constuct made possible through the liguistical manipulation of the gay community”.

(Odd. Apparently “gay” doesn’t exist, but a “gay community” does…)

It also makes the exgay/reorientation claims about the origins of same-sex (and, by extension, opposite-sex) attractions/orientation appear absurd or (at best) tenuous. Hence my original comments about teaching Roy about football or shipping him off to an unlicensed exgay camp.

What the observations about same-sex and opposite-sex pair-bonding in both animals and humans instead indicate is a biological basis for the observed behavior. That it appears as the minority expression and has been observed as more than “friendship” strengthens the case for a basic biological inheritance. As to the “why” — who yet knows?

Of course, you’ll never accept that all species have a biological inheritance if you prefer the views in a 2500-year-old book over the collective weight of the sciences since that time…

And Warren (note: George, you seem to agree with me as to the purpose of the op-ed.)

… without knowing a cause (which is fair enough), you said animal sexuality was “flexible” and “context driven”. This was from your human and indirect interpretation of the behavior of one bird.

I wonder where the unchanged Roy or his never-gay feathered buddies figures in all this?… do they prove that penguin sexuality is inflexible and object driven?

What you are basically dredging up is that “polymorphously pervert” notion of Freud; with the exception that he at least applied it to human infants rather than adult animals. No? I thought you said not to make that sort of extrapolation. Or did you mean the extrapolation only works in one direction?

(Of course this wouldn’t the first time that has been done from an exgay/reorientation perspective…)

Life, as they say, is a bell-shaped curve but the overwhelming majority of animals (incl. humans) do not display flexible or context driven sexuality around pair-bonding. The majority are stable in their attractions and the resulting behavior, even when opportunity otherwise exists.

I’m not sure that’s what he is doing. Where in the world did he use humans as a model for penguin sexuality?

Gay people often give me an argument along the lines of “animals do it too, therefore its normal.” They ought to read this op-ed. I see this op-ed as a reaction to those types of arguments.

Not sure how this statement can be made to inspire certainty: “influenced by factors we do not fully understand.” I suppose I am saying with confidence that we do not understand the significance of sexual behavior in animals. Doesn’t seem like dogmatism to me. But I don’t want to be dogmatic about that 🙂

CK – Waddle, march, what’s the difference? As for the status of humans, I am, as you know, one of those neanderthals that believes humans were designed specially for human things.