gay giraffes

(Gay giraffes say, "We're here.  We're queer.  We're used to it.  What the hell is your problem?") 

I've been meaning to hit this story for weeks.  Tonight just seems like the right time. 

From male killer whales that ride the dorsal fin of another male to female bonobos that rub their genitals together, the animal kingdom tolerates all kinds of lifestyles.

A first-ever museum display, "Against Nature?,"  which opened last month at the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum in Norway, presents 51 species of animals exhibiting homosexuality.

"Homosexuality has been observed in more than 1,500 species, and the phenomenon has been well described for 500 of them," said Petter Bockman, project coordinator of the exhibition.

Of course, the museum exhibit is in Norway, where animals and humans alike have more reasonable views on these thing than we do here in the United States of Christianist Dumbfuckistan.  Here, museums are so cowed by the Flat-Earth Talibangelicals that they don't even dare talk about evolution, let alone something as scientific and empirically verifiable as homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom.

Yes, apparently no scientific fact is too established for the fundamentalist whack-jobs to censor and whitewash over if it flies too closely in the face of their political and religious agendas.  So, don't expect "Against Nature?" to come through your city's municipal museum any time soon.

The argument that a homosexual way of living cannot be accepted because it is against the "laws of nature" can now be rejected scientifically, said Geir Soli, project leader for the exhibition. "A main target for this project was to get museums involved in current debate; to show that museums are more than just a gallery for the past."

Uh, yeah, I don't see that playing too well in Kansas, Dorothy.

Copulation could be used for alliance and protection among animals of the same sex. In situations when a species is mostly bisexual (What, like ours?-ed.), homosexual relationships allow an animal to join a pack.

That would certainly explain some of the behaviors I observed at a couple of fraternity parties my old band played in the 90's. 

"In bonobos for instance, strict heterosexual individuals would not be able to make friends in the flock and thus never be able to breed," Bockman told LiveScience. "In some bird species that bond for life, homosexual pairs raise young. If they are females, a male may fertilize their eggs. If they are males, a solitary female may mate with them and deposit her eggs in their nest."

Mom and Dad and Dad
Almost a quarter of black swan families are parented by homosexual couples. Male couples sometimes mate with a female just to have a baby. Once she lays the egg, they chase her away, hatch the egg, and raise a family on their own.

"Homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" are terms defined by societal boundaries, invisible in the animal kingdom.

From R. J. Eskow at HuffPo:

But the information is out there, and in 2006 it became part of the popular scientific world. This is a devastating blow to the standard fundamentalist argument against homosexuality, which is that it isn't natural. Actually, it is – among people, animals, even preachers (And vice-presidential daughters!-TRex). There is a healthy debate among scientists as to what evolutionary purpose it may serve.

If you're a fundamentalist Christian, Muslim, or Jew, you now have to face the fact that homosexuality, since it occurs throughout nature, is also therefore God-given.  

GASP!!

Stay with current schools of thought, Christians. Those schools say that Creation is a reflection of God's goodness and beauty. And Muslims, remember what the Q'uran has taught you:

Verily in the heavens and the earth, are Signs for those who believe … and in the creation of yourselves and the fact that animals are scattered (through the earth), are Signs for those of assured Faith … And He has subjected to you, as from Him, all that is in the heavens and on earth: Behold, in that are Signs indeed for those who reflect.

As I say, the fundamentalists are much too powerful to let this information get much publicity in the US.

That's the freakin' truth.  When, oh, when are the grown-ups going to start fighting back against the Christian Right's attempt to stop all scientific thought in its tracks in this country?  When is that famous wall between church and state we hear so much about going to kick back in?  Doesn't anyone in this country besides Rosie O'Donnell make the connection between radical fundamentalist Christians and their jihadi counterparts in the Middle East?  Both groups want exactly the same things, i.e., forced breeding and lives of subservience for women, government intervention in people's most private, personal decisions, and national policy based on their blinkered misinterpretations of their ancient "holy" documents.

Well, regardless of what happens in terms of national policy, I at least know that I'm on good terms with my Higher Power.  When I was but a teen, struggling with my sexual identity, I remember bringing up the question of "sin" and my orientation to my mom.  I remember her laughing and hugging me tight and saying, "You are just exactly how God made you, honey.  I've known you were gay since you were three years old, maybe before.  God sent you to this family just the way you are, and He wants you to be happy.  You have just as much of a right to be here as a rock or a bird or a tree.  So, don't worry about all that.  That's just ignorant and superstitious people and the discomfort they feel with their own homosexual experiences and feelings.  It's got nothing to do with you."

Oh.  Hey, thanks, Mom!

And thank you, God.  You must think we're pretty embarrassingly stupid, huh?  You've had this whole gay thing worked out for thousands, if not millions of years and here we are still scrapping about it when all you asked us to do was love each other and live right.  We've got a lot of evolving, er, "intelligent designing" to do, still, don't we?

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