“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 Universitys law school, who grew up on a farm. Ive 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 theres that verse about the dog returning to its vomit . . . .