Why Some People Are Gay: Notes (and Clues) from the Animal Kingdom
We have known for at least a decade that hundreds of animal species — including birds, reptiles, mollusks and, of course, humans — engage in same-gender sexual acts. But no one is quite sure why. After all, same-sex couplings don’t usually result in offspring. (I say usually because when male marine snails pair with other males, one partner conveniently changes sex, allowing for reproduction.) Evolutionarily speaking, homosexuality should have disappeared long ago.
A yearlong study just completed at the University of California at Riverside offers several fascinating competing theories about why same-gender sexual behavior has endured. And although it’s gay-pride month — and the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots that sparked the gay-rights movement — not all the theories will give same-gender-loving humans a reason to celebrate. (See the top 10 animal stories of 2007.)
One particularly charged finding is that in most species besides humans, same-gender pairings rarely lead to lifelong relationships. In other words, when one attractive bonobo male eyes another in a lovely patch of Congo swamp forest, they occasionally kiss and then move on to other oral pleasures, but they don’t bother anyone afterward about trying to legalize their right to an open-banana-bar ceremony. In fact, they are likely to move on to girl bonobos: most animals that engage in same-gender sex acts do so only when an opposite-sex partner is unavailable.
And yet the study’s authors, Nathan Bailey and Marlene Zuk of UC Riverside’s biology department, report some exceptions, like the laysan albatross. Last year, researchers studying a Hawaiian colony of albatrosses found that nearly a third of all the couples involved two females who courted and then shared parenting responsibilities. (Albatrosses don’t have U-Hauls, so no lesbian jokes, please.) Male chinstrap penguins also form long-term relationships, at least in captivity. And some male bighorn sheep will mount females only after the females adopt male-like behaviors.
What explains all these variances? Here are some hypotheses I collected from Bailey and Zuk’s paper as well as from some of their original sources:
See Why Some People Are Gay: Notes (and Clues) from the Animal Kingdom
TIME
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Whose Holocaust? Plan to Recognize Gay Victims at Memorial Sparks Row
A plan to memorialize gay male victims of Nazism amid a collection of memorial stones for Holocaust victims in a quiet half-acre patch of Brooklyn has provoked an outcry.
New York State Assembly Member Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat whose many Orthodox constituents include numerous Holocaust survivors, has decried the planned addition as a distortion of the Holocaust’s meaning with regard to Jews.
“It’s easy to say, let’s include everybody, let’s be universal, diversity is great,” he said. But he added, “It just isn’t fair. It diminishes and really dilutes what the Holocaust is.”
Hikind and the Holocaust Memorial Committee, steward of the tiny Holocaust Memorial Park in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, are calling for the park’s memorial stones to be restricted to Jewish victims of Hitler. But the plan, approved by the city’s parks department, to commemorate non-Jewish victims of the Nazi regime there is proceeding thus far.
On June 9, representatives of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Children of Holocaust Survivors, which proposed the addition, could be found combing the bayside memorial to measure unmarked stone pillars and determine if memorial text could be carved on them, association co-chair Rick Landman said.
The altercation raises a question that Jews have faced with increasing frequency: Whose Holocaust is it, anyway? Roma Gypsies, the disabled and gay men were among those also especially targeted by the Nazis. According to historians, though, only Jews and Roma were targeted for annihilation. Altogether, the Nazis are estimated to have murdered some 11 million from their coming to power in 1933 until their downfall in 1945.
Flanked by Emmons Avenue and Shore Boulevard, at the easternmost end of Sheepshead Bay, the memorial, built in 1997, consists of a tall eternal flame sculpture — engraved with a short statement on the Holocaust and the nations affected by the genocide — surrounded by two adjacent gardens of stone markers, each of which features either a paragraph or two of history or a list of victims’ names.
For $360 per engraved line, donors to the non-profit Holocaust Memorial Committee can pay to have a victim’s name printed on one of the stone markers. The registration form for this service, found on the committee’s Web site, asks donors to provide the victim’s name and a brief history of his or her Holocaust experience. The committee then meets to verify the authenticity of the proposed inscription, committee treasurer and past president Alfred Gollomp said.
Gollomp complained that in signing on to the IALGCHS proposal, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the city’s parks department were ignoring a memorandum that gives the Brooklyn-based group control over the park markers.
See Whose Holocaust? Plan to Recognize Gay Victims at Memorial Sparks Row
Forward
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We’re Deer. We’re Queer. Get Used to It.
Homosexuality in humans is a hot-button issue that gets plenty of coverage, but same-gender sex in animals rarely makes headlines. The organizers of a new Norwegian exhibition on homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom hope to call attention to the often ignored subject.
“People always come up with the argument that homosexuality is somehow against nature. And that’s not true,” said Petter Bøckman, the academic advisor for the “Against Nature?” exhibition at the Norwegian Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo.
Through models, photos, texts, and specimens ranging in size from tiny insects to enormous sperm whales, visitors can learn about a small selection of gay animals.
Scientists have observed homosexual behavior in 1,500 animal species, said Bøckman. Take, for instance, bonobos, one of our closest relatives and perhaps the most well-known homosexual animals. “They’re known to be rampantly bisexual,” he said. Killer whales, bottlenose dolphins, West Indian manatees, and giraffes have all-male orgies. Among black-headed gulls, scientists estimate that one in ten pairs is comprised of two females. Same-sex penguin couples have been known to have long relationships and raise chicks.
Homosexuality is most widespread among animals with a complex herd life. It functions as a kind of social glue for bonobos, who use sex to diffuse conflict—a marked difference from other primates that solve conflicts with violence. Homosexuality also plays a social role among other male animals, such as big horn sheep and lions.
But researchers have no idea what the advantage is, if any, of homosexual behavior among dragonflies, scarab beetles, or, as observed at least once, two male octopuses of different species. See We’re Deer. We’re Queer. Get Used to It.
Mother Nature Network * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Truth Wins Out Fights Back Against Lie Campaign With Hard-Hitting Full Page Ad In The Salt Lake Tribune
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Washington Students Protest Anti-Gay-Marriage Column
Hundreds of University of Washington students gathered on Saturday to protest an anti-gay-marriage column published in the school’s student newspaper on November 25, the Daily reports. The opinion piece, titled, “Gay marriage? Lets stop and think about this,” described homosexuality as “more of an emotional condition” and argued that legalizing gay marriage would lead to a slippery slope of legal polygamy, incest, and bestiality. An illustration featuring a man standing next to a sheep accompanied the piece.
Several student groups, such as the graduate student government, have called for an apology and even for the newspaper’s editorial board’s resignation.
See Washington Students Protest Anti-Gay-Marriage Column
U.S. News & World Report
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undreds rally at UW against anti-gay marriage column in campus newspaper
About 200 people attended a rally Friday at the University of Washington to protest an anti-gay marriage column that ran in the student newspaper, The Daily.
Protesters say language in the column, including a reference to bestiality, coupled with the accompanying image of a man standing next to a sheep, amounted to hate speech. But speakers differed on whether the paper should be censured.
Ana Mari Cauce, the UW’s dean of arts and sciences, talked about her own struggles coming out as a lesbian and the hurt she felt in reading the column.
“But the antidote to free speech is more free speech,” she said. “I am thankful that I am living in a country where everyone has the right to express their opinions.”
On the other hand, the Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) this week passed a resolution demanding the paper apologize.
However, the editor-in-chief of The Daily, Sarah Jeglum, said this week she stands behind the decision to run the column and isn’t planning any sort of apology. In a Friday column, Jeglum said she’d learned “Free speech is for everyone. It’s not just for the majority, and it’s not just for the minority.”
That difference of opinion, if not resolved, could lead to a showdown between the editors of the paper and the elected student-body representatives who sit on the publications board which oversees The Daily.
See Hundreds rally at UW against anti-gay marriage column in campus …
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