“A university academic has criticised David Attenborough’s wildlife shows for not featuring enough gay animals,” reports The Independent. The academic, named Mills, who I hope is a very, very distant relative, writing in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, says
‘The central role in documentary stories of pairing, mating and raising offspring commonly rests on assumptions of heterosexuality within the animal kingdom.’
Dr Mills says this perception is created by the documentaries despite evidence that show animals have ‘complex and changeable forms of sexual activity, with heterosexuality only one of many possible options.’
One recognizes the human agenda in this, partly in the making of animals’ normal behavior into “only one of many possible options.” But in any case it doesn’t mean anything for human life and morals. As it happens, I wrote about this in the While We’re At It section of the January issue, after a conversation with an earnest young man who seemed to think it did mean something for human life and morals.
• Some animals are homosexual, said the young man, mentioning two male penguins who reportedly raised a chick together, though the one news story we saw did not say whether the two were, um, romantically involved. Conservative activists had long used the supposed absence of such actions among animals as a moral argument against such actions by humans, which seemed unwise and has proven to be so.
Their understanding of the Fall was deficient, and their identification of “natural” confused a way of thinking about who we really are and how we ought to act, with “natural” meaning the life we observe in nature. Using that logic, homosexualist activists now invoke these animals as a moral argument for the good of human homosexuality.
“Duh,” noted our friend Gregory Laughlin of Samford University’s law school, who grew up on a farm. “I’ve seen two boars ‘together.’ So what? Animals also viciously kill one another, even their own kind. Does that make murder ‘natural’ and, therefore, licit among humans?”
It gets worse: “Many animals have multiple sex partners, and the male is often uninvolved in caring for his offspring. Does that make adultery, promiscuity, and paternal abandonment ‘natural’ and, therefore, licit among humans?
“Animals go into a frenzy when fed, pushing others out of the way and even trampling others to get to the food. Does that make greed, gluttony, covetousness, and theft ‘natural’ and, therefore, licit among humans?”
And there’s that verse about the dog returning to its vomit . . . .
February 20th, 2013 | 11:38 am
Sometimes, I think the human race is regressing in intelligence.
February 20th, 2013 | 12:23 pm
When I was a child I spent the night with a friend and his hamster gave birth, something either scared her or it was her first litter, any way she ate every one of them through the night. Although biology classifies humans as animals, I don’t think we should look the to animal kingdom to inform us on our behavior. Especially since we were created apart from the lower animals.
February 20th, 2013 | 12:48 pm
This kind of “reasoning” always reminds me of this exchange from The African Queen:
“Charlie Allnut: A man takes a drop too much once in a while, it’s only human nature.
Rose Sayer: Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above. ”
Rose could be an annoying pest and she was sometimes wrong, but she was often right.
February 20th, 2013 | 1:21 pm
I think ‘gay animals’ are a valid argument for two reasons:
1. It demonstrates naturalness in the sense of ‘it exists in the natural world’. By this reasoning it’s also ‘natural’ for humans to be very violent to each other (as well as very nice to each other). This is important because there’s a strain of conservative argument that tries to assert homosexuality just doesn’t really exist….it’s all an ideological invention of some sort by liberals, free love hippies, rock and roll or some other riff-raff.
2. The fact is the right has tried to base part of their argument around “you don’t see gay animals”. You’re right, that was ‘ill advised’ but there’s a price to pay for not paying attention to good advice! Let’s be honest here, suppose intense investigation into the animal world was unable to turn up any examples of ‘gay animals’. Does anyone really think those critical of gays would shrug and say “it’s tempting but we can’t draw any conclusions against homosexuality from observing the animal world”.
February 20th, 2013 | 1:40 pm
I don’t think we should look the to animal kingdom to inform us on our behavior.
Doug,
I hope no one would argue that. As David Mills notes, “Conservative activists had long used the supposed absence of such actions among animals as a moral argument against such actions by humans, which seemed unwise and has proven to be so.” And obviously the presence of such actions as killing one’s mate (as with the praying mantis) or eating one’s young (a great many species) wouldn’t justify those practices in human beings.
But it certainly appears to be the case that “nature red in tooth and claw” existed long before the Fall. So it does not appear to me that even the most ghastly and heartless aspects of animal behavior can be attributed to human sin. And so for me that raises questions about what should be looked upon as “natural” and “unnatural” both in the simple sense of what does/doesn’t occur and also in the sense of what is meant (or not meant) to occur. It would seem to me that non-human animals that eat their young or cruelly (to human eyes) play with their prey before killing it are an intended part of creation, not a result of sin entering the world.
February 20th, 2013 | 1:56 pm
Surely this episode will end as a paper title for the next MLA conference. I’m envisioning something like: “[mis]identifying heternormativity in the ‘animal kingdom’: A Queer approach to the problem of speciesism and the sexual behavior of the transgendered cheetah.”
February 20th, 2013 | 2:40 pm
David
I agree – I wonder if the Garden was a special place within creation that God set aside to place a specific being into i.e. man, created in God’s image – and that there was a lot of other things going outside of the Garden where life would become a burden – it seems God had prepared a place to banish man too.
I like what Ravi Zacharias says in “The Grand Weaver” Chapter 4 – At the Fall man defines what is Good and Evil and then use his/our own moral code to judge God. Which bring me to the idea that what man could ever over come this problem of naming good and evil – there could only be one such being one who actually has the authority to name good and evil – such being would have to be both full God and full man in a name Jesus.
I hope my thoughts are not to disjointed – I’m new at this – also I sometimes write the way I do because I think it sound poetic – but often it just sound condescending that is not my intention.
February 20th, 2013 | 2:42 pm
I don’t think we should look the to animal kingdom to inform us on our behavior.
should read -
I don’t think we should look to the animal kingdom to inform us on our behavior.
February 20th, 2013 | 4:01 pm
If animals that engage in same-sex sexual behavior are “a valid argument”, what is that moral argument and on what basis is it valid? Is it demonstrably sound?
Human beings in captivity or under duress might exhibit such behavior. Outside of such contexts, is there a nonhuman analogue that evidences what is claimed as a deep seated tendency?
Certainly there is no evidence of a socio-politicalgroup identity among nonhumans that would be the analogue for gay identity.
Gay is not inborn for no such socio-political identity is inborn nor is same-sex sexual behavior one and the same as gay identity. A deep seated tendency toward such behavior is not one and the same as a socio-political identity. But claiming that “gay animals” exist and that “gay animals” are a valid argument, well, that does bespeak an ideological distortion of what might be observed in animal behavior. It does not provide sound moral argumentation in favor of the assumed moral uprightness of same-sex sexual behavior or other types of behavior among human beings. It merely presses onto observations of animal behavior the socio-political template already asserted. It is asserted arbitrarily both for humans and (by this extension) for nonhumans.
February 20th, 2013 | 4:18 pm
But it certainly appears to be the case that “nature red in tooth and claw” existed long before the Fall.
Yea this view that animals are mean to each other because of the Fall has always struck me as strange. Why would animals be impacted by sin from Adam and Eve?
Also this seems to reek of anthropmorphism. If birds are not faithful to their mates, lobsters like to rip each other to shreads, cats kill mice for what seems to be pure fun, it’s not correct to say that’s ‘immoral behavior’. You’re assuming the moral code for an animal is the same as it is for a person hence the cheating bird is no different morally than Newt Gingrich.
Hence we get this argument here that’s essentially along the lines of “don’t look to animals for moral behavior because animals are very immoral to begin with hence make poor role models”. This is silly, of course.
But it does make sense to look to animals for clues about what’s natural. The fact that ‘cheating’ is very common in the animal world indicates that it is indeed natural for humans to be inclined to ‘stray’ from their mates. That doesn’t say anything about the morality of such an act for a human, but we’re kidding ourselves if we want to pretend it’s unnatural. Likewise versions of the ‘blank slate’ theory that says children are not naturally inclined to fight with each other and use violence…that such behavior only comes from ‘corrupting’ influences in society….is flat out wrong since animal behavior indicates otherwise! It doesn’t follow though that if your kids are beating each other bloody you have no right to intervene morally.
February 20th, 2013 | 6:23 pm
_it does make sense to look to animals for clues about what’s natural._
It makes sense to look to animals for clues to what’s natural _for those animals_. But we are not those animals. Ergo, such observation tells us no more about what is natural for _us_ than it does about what is moral for us.
February 20th, 2013 | 7:01 pm
In fairness, the “gay animals’ publicist” does not refer to “gay” animals in any of the quotes attributed to him or in the abstract of the article mentioned. All the references to “gay” animals are made by the reporters, who no doubt find it amusing.
Whatever the motives, Doctor Brett Mills and others are calling attention to empirical matters of fact, and the nature documentaries that ignore the realities of animal behavior are at best incomplete.
February 20th, 2013 | 7:30 pm
Ergo, such observation tells us no more about what is natural for _us_ than it does about what is moral for us.
Fred,
The problem here is what natural is taken to mean. If it means what human beings were meant to do and not do based on a concept of human nature as it allegedly existed before the Fall, that’s one thing. It it means (per Webster’s) according to the usual course of things : as might be expected, that’s quite another. According to the first definition, masturbation is unnatural (and a grave sin), but psychiatrists and psychologists, going by something akin to the second definition, would say masturbation is “natural” and, in and of itself, not even remotely pathological.
The question, it seems to me, is whether the understanding of what is “natural” human behavior according to the Catholic understanding of natural law is so far removed from the other meaning of “natural” as to be unjustifiable.
February 20th, 2013 | 7:31 pm
Ergo, such observation tells us no more about what is natural for _us…
So if you gave a dog a small piece of cake your wife cooked just for you and it drops dead moments after eating it, will you gobble down the rest of the slice?
Clearly animals are different from us enough to tell us that natural for them isn’t always natural for us, but what is natural for them often has some analogue for us at least. If indeed there’s ‘gay animals’ exist in many animal populations, that’s good reason to think gay humans are just as real and not some sociological creation of the 20th/21st century.
February 20th, 2013 | 7:37 pm
Do animals practice the Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church? I dídn’t think so. The model for Catholics and other Orthodox Christians is the Holy Family. This and only this is the reason why we have the annual assault on the Nativity. Obliterate that Image and it will with time be forgotten. Like not wearing pajama bottoms in public. There is no substantial constitutional principle involved. The Church and our Jewish scriptural ancestors have thought long and hard about these things. Thus were they given deference by the Founders. We are made for procreation but not all of us practice it. In this case the minority, and that includes old bachelors like me, should shut up and be quiet about “our rights.” Those who complain about a “child-centered” culture border on the unhinged. Not to mention civic and moral negligence. There are greater concerns, greater values, greater reasons to be considered here. And I would go so far as to say a greater love that extends beyond romance and gratification. No one is interfering with the freedom of the gay culture, the gay establishment, or the gay power movement to live as they wish. If the Constitutional order is so shriveled, so petty, so bigoted, so narrowly proscribed that tens of millions of American Catholics, and others so inclined, cannot live marriage and family as traditionally understood and the religious obligations that obtain then we must recognize where the real fascistic tendencies lie. And why.
As for gay animals… it was always going to get this silly. It is the human burden not to be a beast. In that concession to nature lies the way to the madness of “post-birth abortion” and sex-selected abortion and “my body” trumping “its body” freedom. And also tenure at most American and British universities.
February 20th, 2013 | 9:39 pm
The concept of “sexual orientation” was invented by psychiatrists in the 19th century. It encompasses far more than sexual behavior and goes to, so the claim, the root of human personality.
Thus applying the concept to animals is nonsensical. The notion of a “gay animal” is ridiculous on its face.
Now if one wants to point out that certain animals engage in same-sex sexual behavior, all well and good. Plenty of humans who are NOT “gay” do the same (viz. the phenomenon of “men who have sex with men”). I am not sure that sexual desire is a meaningful concept among animals. Certainly sexual identity and “orientation” are not.
February 21st, 2013 | 2:14 am
Although I support animal rights, I think that one should make a distinction between human traits and animal traits. As David Mills noted, just because it’s been shown that certain animals do things naturally, in no way means that humans must do them. Certainly, as a consequence of our shared evolutionary history, there will naturally be some animal traits that humans also have, such as mothers caring for their young. (and the fact that both humans and animals are conscious and therefore can suffer, is sufficient to my mind that both humans and animals have rights, but that’s for another day’s discussion).
February 21st, 2013 | 6:19 am
Doug, hamsters eating babies caused a trauma in a first-grade classroom years ago. Apparently, in cages, when the mother senses she cannot take care of them properly, she eats them. Whether they do this in the wild is another question. But, again, animals are not our guides….not even our cats!
February 21st, 2013 | 7:39 am
Devinicus,
Your post seems well argued but when you look at it carefully it just isn’t. To start:
concept of “sexual orientation” was invented by psychiatrists in the 19th century
Is this an argument against the concept? If so what is it? Concepts originated in the 19th century must be wrong? Concepts from psychiatrists must be wrong (are we channelling L Ron Hubbard here?)? The word ‘invented’ seems to be a claim that it’s all made up, but might not a better word simply be ‘discovered’ as in this is a concept that makes sense of the results of careful observation?
I agree the concept goes to ‘the root of human personality’ but most people agree clearly that animals have personality too. I suppose some types of animals more than others. It hardly seems ‘ridiculous on its face’ to say that for some species sexual orientation may be part of that. Granted we can’t say we know what animals are subjectively experiencing. We can’t assume the feeling of ‘sexual desire’ for a dog or cat is the same as a human. But if you think about it we can’t even say we know for sure what the subjective experience of these things are for any humans other than us.
February 21st, 2013 | 9:08 am
Watching Cesar Milan’s “The Dog Whisperer” is useful. He mentions “mounting behavior” as a dominating action taken by dogs when they are working out their relationship with each other and with the pack. It’s a matter-of-fact observation and makes perfect sense. I’d like to see one of these “gay animal” activists try and argue it out with him.
February 21st, 2013 | 10:03 am
Boonton,
My point about the “invention” of sexual orientation is to highlight the cultural nature of the concept. I have no position on whether sexual orientation is “real” or not — although one could do worse than read David Halperin’s work on the subject. In that animals do not have culture, and I am pretty sure they don’t have identity in the human sense, they do not have sexual orientation. This is something which we (or at least some of “we”) foist upon animals to make our own cultural, social and political arguments.
February 21st, 2013 | 10:15 am
Fred –
Indeed. See this essay. It points out just how many models there are to choose from. Humans are mammals. But not just mammals – primates. But not just primates, old world primates. But not just old world primates – apes. But not just apes – great apes. But of the great apes, we’re most closely related to the two varieties of chimpanzees.
And yet our social organization and lifestyle closely resembles bird societies in several important respects.
Depending on the details of lifestyle and biology, animals range from exclusively homosexual (e.g. whiptail lizards) to promiscuous among all genders (e.g. bonobo chimps) to monagamous (e.g. chimpanzees).
Where the ‘argument from gay animals’ has some purchase, though, is that it makes the point – provides an ‘existence proof’ – that homosexuality can ‘make sense’ in some circumstances. The question is whether such circumstances ever obtain among humans.
February 21st, 2013 | 10:18 am
Thus applying the concept to animals is nonsensical. The notion of a “gay animal” is ridiculous on its face.
Devinicus,
If you read everything in the post and the linked articles, nobody is talking about “gay animals” but you and other critics of Dr. Brett Mills. I quote agree that the notion of a “gay animal” is ridiculous. But the idea of animals that engage in homosexual behavior occasionally or even exclusively is not ridiculous. It’s simply a fact.
February 21st, 2013 | 11:01 am
Devinicus
My point about the “invention” of sexual orientation is to highlight the cultural nature of the concept
I don’t see how you’re supporting this. Suppose I say that lobsters are prone to demonstrate aggression towards each other. Is that a ‘cultural observation’? when we see lobsters fight each other, clawing off their eyes and such are we supposed to claim that’s not aggression, maybe that’s just their way of shaking hands and saying ‘hello’?
That is incorrect. It would be a cultural bias to say that lobsters are ‘mean’ to each other. We really have no idea what, if anything, is ‘going on’ inside a lobster’s head. But we can describe lobsters as aggressive towards each other relative to other species who are less so. That’s simply objective observation.
By your reasoning gravity would also be a concept with a ‘cultural nature’ as there was something about Newton’s England that caused him to put so much effort into describing it in mathematically abstract terms. That may be true but it has nothing to do with the fact that gravity exists whether or not culture is able to ‘see it’ for what it is.
February 21st, 2013 | 11:15 am
Okay, here’s a very basic question that I would like to raise with those who scoff at the idea of discussing animal homosexuality and human sexuality in the same breath.
Is there some biological basis for the fact that most of the sexual behavior we see in non-human primates is heterosexual? It would seem to be obviously the case. Now, is the fact that human beings, as primates, also engage in predominantly heterosexual behavior in no way biologically based in some similar way to the way it is biologically based in non-human primates? Is sexuality for non-human primates and sexuality for human primates completely different? Do male chimps respond sexually to female chimps for some reason wholly different than the reason men respond sexually to women?
Now one might ask the same question about homosexual behavior among non-human primates and humans. Are they two entirely different phenomena? Do non-human primates engage in homosexual behavior for reasons of evolution and adaption, an do humans engage in homosexual behavior because the Fall distorted something in human nature? Or is sexual behavior in humans and non-human primates at least partially attributable to similar biology between close relatives on the evolutionary tree?
Note that this is not an argument that if animals engage in homosexual behavior, it is moral for humans to do the same. It is a suggestion that humans share much in common with non-human primates, and it seems to me that it is highly unlikely that non-human-primate homosexuality and human homosexuality are two entirely unrelated phenomenon.
February 21st, 2013 | 12:15 pm
“My point about the “invention” of sexual orientation is to highlight the cultural nature of the concept.”
Why yes. Humans are not only animals that have souls(debatable, but I think that the best explanation for a lot of human quirks), humans are animals that have cultures. Do not try to co-opt that “social construct” meme as if there was a distinction between culture and “naturalness” or as if culture could be bent at will.
February 21st, 2013 | 2:34 pm
Their understanding of the Fall was deficient, and their identification of “natural” confused a way of thinking about who we really are and how we ought to act, with “natural” meaning the life we observe in nature.
It should be noted that only certain Christians believe in the Fall. Catholics, of course, do believe in it. The Eastern Orthodox (to oversimplify) don’t. Jews don’t. So the Catholic view of natural law and “who we really are and how we ought to act” is based on a religious view of “nature” that is not universally agreed upon. It is unverifiable and depends on religious faith, and consequently—although the Catholic Church claims moral truths are discoverable through reason alone—the Catholic view of human nature is not a matter of reason but of revelation. To the extent that the Fall influences Catholic reasoning on sexual morality, to that same extent those who do not believe in the Fall have reason to disagree with the Catholic Church’s moral conclusions.
February 24th, 2013 | 11:12 pm
David Nickol, the young man in the While We’re At It section did talk of homosexual animals and invoked the nition as per homosexualist activists who’d use same-sex sexual behavior among animals as the basis for a moral argument for the good of homosexuality.
It is common for such people to conflate the behavior and the sexual attraction and the gay identity. They rarely, if ever, distinguish between homosexuality and gay identity.
In this discussion, right before your eyes, Boonton asserted that “gay animals” are a valid argument just the way that the young man did — “it exists in the natural world” (read non-human world) because the inverse had been used as an argument (invalid as moral argument). Boonton gotmuddled, sure, but the claim was made for a valid argument from “gay animals”.
Apparently you think along those lines for you referred to homosexual behavior to imply a sexual oriental or sexual identity among non-humans as “empirical fact” inferred from behavior that animals exhibit “occassionaly or even exclusively”.
Is gay identity one and the same as homosexual behavior? Perhaps gay is the socio-political euphemism for what you had in mind while writing your comments.
Dr Mills referred to “changeable forms of sexuality, with heterosexuality only one of many options.” That does invoke the basis for the moralism regarding the good of human homosexuality.
It is very like the implications of your last few comments about “reasons of evolution and adaptation” and regarding what you suspect is not a justifiable distinction between what humans are meant to do (ought statements of morality based on human reason) and what might be expected (by psychiatrist and psychologist, you said overly inclusively) in the usual course of things.
Whether this or that behavior is part of creation is not the substantive issue. Also you…
February 24th, 2013 | 11:26 pm
Also you mistook The use of human reason in Catholic teaching with a revelation-dependent basis for the moral teachings on human sexuality. That error belies your confusion.
The nature of humankind does not place biological facts in contradiction with human reason. The truth is not self-refuting, of course. I think your comments both A) imply that biological and empirical facts, as you’d relay them, contradict, at least, what human beings are meant to do and B) these facts are in harmony with what we are meant to do.
In short, you appear to want it both ways. I think that has misled you to mischaracterize Catholic teaching on human sexual morality as somehow setting revelation in conflict with reason and discernment. It is the type of error that can open the door to a fuller understanding of Catholicism. There is a knock at the door and you can choose to answer it. Or not — yet at least.
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