Against nature?

Last October 12, 2006 The Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, opened the first-ever museum exhibition dedicated to gay animals. Nowadays it is widely known that homosexuality is a common and widespread phenomenon in the animal world. Not only short-lived sexual relationships, but sometimes even long-lasting partnerships; partnerships that may last a lifetime (even longer than with us humans…).

It’s not always easy to know that an animal is homosexual. But the exhibit puts on display models, photos, texts and specimens testifying the fascinating observation of homosexuality among more than 1500 species, from tiny insects to enormous spermwhales. “Sadly, most museums have no traditions for airing difficult, concealed, and possibly controversial questions. Homosexuality is certainly such a question. We feel confident that a greater understanding of how extensive and common this behaviour is among animals, will help to de-mystify homosexuality among people. - At least, we hope to reject the all too well known argument that homosexual behaviour is a crime against nature”.

At the same time, the newspaper New York Times reported on a polemic around a research programme by Dr Charles Roselli, a researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University in the USA, set out to discover what makes some sheep gay. Dr Roselli has searched for the past five years for “physiological” factors that might explain why about 8 percent of male sheep seek sex exclusively with other males instead of females. The goal, according to him, would be to understand the “fundamental mechanisms” (whatever that might mean…) of sexual orientation in sheep. But then the media and the blogosphere got hold of the story and the polemic started. Last Autumn, the organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals started a campaign against this research, and it has since then drawn outrage from animal rights activists, in particular tennis player Martina Navratilova, gay movement activists and ordinary citizens around the world. According to Dr. Roselli, those critics would be based on a misinterpretation of the objectives of his research.

Not quite so, I would argue… firstly, if he reaches some conclusive results, researchers could some day build on his findings to seek ways to determine which sheep are likeliest to breed. Then if any mechanisms underlying sexual orientation are to be discovered and can be manipulated, then the argument that sexual orientation is based in biology and is immutable would not be valid anymore. From there it isn’t difficult to imagine parents eventually willing to choose not to have children who could become gay. And that is a real concern for the future. As the NYT writes, since research and science are hard to stop, it would be more positive to try to change public perception of homosexuality as something wrong or “against nature’.