Gay couples in the wild

Illustration by Lars Wannop

When I studied Philosophy at the University, some of my professors wanted me to believe we come from animals.
So we used to look at animals to understand if one ethic behaviour was “natural” or “unnatural” (which meant “good” or “bad”) especially if it concerned real human habits.
The rule was “would a monkey do that?”, “should my cat do so?” and so on.
Thanks to the “Wild argument”, if the behaviour was the same for animals and humans, it meant that you were in synch with nature; and - obviously - if it was not, the behaviour you were interested in was against nature.
What about gay couples? According to University of Oslo zoologist Petter Böckman, about 1,500 animal species are known to practice same-sex coupling, including dolphins, bears, gorillas, flamingos, owls, salmon and many others.
That means that reproduction is not the only reason to have sex in nature.
I’m sorry for the Christian Church which for the first time agreed with the evolutionistic theory (because it reinforced the importance of reproduction in beings’ lives), but sex can also have other reasons, like for pleasure or to strengthen bonds.

I’m not sure we always have to look at animals as our ideal measure of justice. I do not believe that “natural” always equals to “right” and “unnatural” to “wrong” or “bad”.
But it seems to me a real fact that humans beings are scared by homophobia. And if animals can help us to fight it… Why not?

Read also our previous post “In the beginning God created ET”

Filed Under Diversity, History & traditions, Human Rights, Research