Why did Jesus make so many gay creatures?

Birds do it, bees do it . . .

Martin Fletcher

Our correspondent reports from Oslo on a new exhibition that appears to debunk the theory that homosexuality is an exclusively human preference

It is not what you would expect to see when you take your children on a Sunday outing to the natural history museum: a giant photograph of one male giraffe humping another, or two whales sparring with giant penises. This, however, is Norway, where — for better or worse — the normal rules do not apply. Three years ago the Government told the country’s museums and libraries that they should do more to contribute to social debates and dare to tackle taboo subjects.

The results of that order are now coming through. One museum is staging an exhibition that debunks the national myth that every Norwegian was an heroic Resistance fighter in the Second World War. A second is planning an exhibition on Vidkun Quisling, the ultimate Norwegian collaborator. A third has an exhibition showing how badly Norway has treated Gypsies.

But the Natural History Museum in Oslo has gone one better. As America’s religious right fulminates against homosexuality, Europe embraces gay marriage, and leading homosexuals such as Martina Navratilova denounce scientists in Oregon for attempting to make gay sheep straight, the Naturhistorisk Museum is stepping squarely into the heart of a controversy that dates back to at least AD1120 when the Church Council of Nablus described homosexuality as a “sin against nature” .

It is staging a government-financed exhibition in its august halls that shows that homosexuality — far from being unnatural — is actually rampant in the animal world. Against Nature? is the first exhibition in the world dedicated to gay animals, claims Petter Bockman, its bearded and ponytailed scientific adviser, who also happens to be the University of Oslo’s leading — and only — frog expert (there are not many amphibians, gay or straight, this far north).

Hey, White Tiger: Here's why showing gay animals matters. The argument goes that animals only have sex when they're mating, and they're always heterosexual, and that's God's way. And yet, anyone with the time to spend watching will find plenty of examples of animals having sex for the sake of having sex, not for procreation, and some of it is homosexual. That would tend to make the behavior natural, since it occurs in nature, far more than you'd like to admit. Homosexuality is not, therefore, "against nature", when so many examples of it can be found "in nature". It isn't whether or not man shouldn't aspire to something better, it's whether or not homosexuality is "unnatural". Homosexuality is clearly a minority behavior, but it isn't as rare as you'd like to believe.

Lions and other animals kill and eat their young on occasion, which would also make that behavior "natural", and yet I wouldn't defend it among humans. So using animals as a determinant of what is "good" behavior is certainly not the best policy, we can agree. On the other hand, no animal kills its own kind the way some humans delight in it, and in this way, I wish people would aspire to being more like the animals. In fact, man's warlike behavior, and Christians' fascination with killing off everyone else, in particular, could be much better described a "sin against nature", because it's considerably more rare in nature (i.e. outside of man's influence) to find mass murder within the same species (only ant colonies come to mind).

The rest of the article is here.