The Gay Animals’ Publicist

“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 . . . .