Can animals really be gay? | The Spectator

can animals be gay

Stop wonrg whether or not dogs or ts n be gay and disver what science says about this behavr the animal kgdom.

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CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?

* can animals be gay *

*Note: We tentnally do not e terms such as “heterosexual” or “homosexual” to prevent any nflatn between human sexualy and nonhuman animal sexual behavrs.

CAN ANIMALS REALLY BE GAY?

<p><strong>Lra Barton</strong> on the pair of gay flamgos named Carlos and Fernando.</p> * can animals be gay *

Wh most speci, homosexual sex has been documented only sporadilly, and there appear to be few s of dividual animals who engage exclively. ” But the journal that published the paper, Blogy Letters, sent out a prs release a few days after the California Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. ” A gay rights advote e-mailed Young, askg her to fly a rabow flag above each female-female nt, to intify them and show solidary.

IS MY PET GAY?

Last week, at the select mtee on the same-sex marriage bill, a lawyer for the Christian Instute revealed that a teacher had been discipled for refg to read to her charg a book about gay pengus. It is par for the urse to teach kids about adult stuff through animal tal. So mak sense * can animals be gay *

In 1999, Bagemihl published “Blogil Exuberance, ” a book that pulled together a lossal amount of prev piecemeal rearch and showed how blogists’ bias had margalized animal homosexualy for the last 150 years — sometim nocently enough, sometim an eptn of anthropomorphic disgt.

CAN ANIMALS BE GAY? PENGUS, FLAMGOS AND WHAL THK SO

Given this big umbrella of theory, the very existence of homosexual behavr animals n feel a ltle like imperable nonsense, somethg a rearcher uld spend years bangg his or her head agast the wall liberatg.

CAN ANIMALS REALLY BE GAY?

The difficulty of that challenge, more than any implic or explic homophobia, may be why past blogists skirted the THE LAST DECADE, however, Pl Vasey and others have begun velopg new hypoth based on actual, prolonged observatn of different animals, cipherg the ways given homosexual behavrs may have evolved and the evolutnary role they might play wh the ntext of dividual speci. So far, the only real ncln this relatively small body of lerature seems to pot to, llectively, is a kd of flatg, meta-ncln: a sgle explanatn of homosexual behavr animals may not be possible, bee thkg of “homosexual behavr animals” as a sgle scientific subject might not make much sense.

But we’re quick to nceive of that great range of activi the way most handily tracks to our anthropomorphic pot of view: put crassly, all those different animals jt seem to be dog gay sex stuff wh one another.

CAN ANIMALS BE GAY??

”Somethg siar may be happeng wh what we perceive to be homosexual sex an array of animal speci: we may be groupg together a big grab bag of behavrs based on only a superficial siary. The Stanford blogist Joan Roughgarn told me to thk of all the animals as “multaskg” wh their private ’s also possible that some homosexual behavrs don’t provi a nventnal evolutnary advantage; but neher do they upend everythg we know about blogy.

CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?

As Z put , “There’s a lot of slop the system — which, ” she was sure to add, “is not the same as sayg homosexualy is a mistake. Young’s hband, a blogil nsultant, was actually an thor of the paper, along wh Brenda Zn (who is also not gay, for what ’s worth). Young found the assumptn offensive — not bee she was beg mistaken for gay, but bee she was beg mistaken for a bad scientist; the people seemed to prume that her rearch was promised by a personal agenda.

Several people I spoke to told me their own sexual inti eher helped spur or mata their tert the topic; Bce Bagemihl argued that gay and lbian people are “often better equipped to tect heterosexist bias when vtigatg the subject simply bee we enunter so equently our everyday liv.

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