[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Safe-Keeper

I love it when this happens. The homophobes are up in arms about how being gay is so damned "unnatural", and yet whenever somebody posts out to them that it isn't, they are all of a sudden dumbfounded as to what on earth nature has to do with the discussion!

Let's put it this way:

Homosexuality neither is the statistical norm representing the sexual design of heterosexual species (the statistical norm in heterosexual species, representing "normality" due to being the dominant norm, is heterosexuality - big surprise); nor is homosexuality the way by which evolutions planned to ensure the survial of a species that was designed to reproduce by mixing genes through sexual intercourse between two different sexes.

Abberations from the norm do not qualify for being a norm of equal quality, quantity and "naturalness". Amongst apes and birds, homosexuality often happens when male adolescent ones still are excluded from competing for the female animals due to being too young or too weak, or when they live in a habitat where they still have not found a mating partner of the other sex, again male animals seem to be effected more often than female animals. Amongst animals, male homosexuality appears to happen more often than female homosexuality. One can thus formulate the theory that this form of homosexuality is not genetically predetermined, but a neurotic reaction to an uncooperative environment - like the budgie that is held alone in a cage although these birds are totally social animals. You then put a mirror into the cage and laugh when the bird starts to court or fight with it's image, in the end even tries to copulöate with the mirror. That is not a sign of natural behavior towards mirrors - it is a sign that the bird has become neurotic due to isolation, and that the mirror serves the purpose of a surrogate for a real mating partner.

Some individual animals even can become fixiated on surrogates for a living mating partner. For example in my home town some years ago there was a swan who fell in love with a tourist boat shaped like a giant swan. The romance lasted two or three seasons, the animal swam beside the boat and did not leave it alone. It finally gave up - when it had found a real swan of the other sex to mate with.

Nobody would conclude from that story that it is natural and a representative event in nature that animals bond with man-made boats.

Homosexuals exist, and I see no reason to discriminate against them, but I also am not willing to label homosexuality as a sexual norm that is of equal meaning and importance in nature than heterosexual relations. If that would be the case, then many species would have gone extinct a long time ago, and probably our own as well. Homosexuality can happen, but it is not the intended and evolutionary planned way by which we should - or could! - move on, as a species. And for evolution, the species ranks higher than the individual. Possible that some people find that unsentimental truth a hard and big pill for their glorious egos to swallow, but that's how it is.

Some people get born with a cheilognathoschisis (=harelip), so the phenomenon exists and in this meaning is part of nature. But it is not the norm, nor is it the way our species design is meant to be - it is an aberration. We must not discriminate people with that anomaly, like we must not discriminate people having the defective gene making them albinos, because they do not mean any disadvantage for the community they live in, but we also must not think or claim that their lip design is natural in the meaning of being representative for our species, or being of equal status beside normally shaped lips.

Not before we allow homosexuality to distort the hierarchy of communal vital and important priorities that safeguard our survival and our communal/cultural integrity, it turns into a problem. That's why the couple living somewhere like everybody else and just let the world be what it is, is no problem for the community. But narcissistic and/or exhibitionistic freak shows like CSD and comparing parades with the outwritten agenda to change society for the worse and relativising important value standards that feed back on our communal solidity and long term survivability, are a problem. And they give the majority of homosexuals who just want to go on with their lives, a bad name, to get their own egoistic kick in the present moment. Last but not least CSD is not only a display of exhibitionsim and narcissism, but of a very ruthless egoism as well. With the "ordinary" homosexual whoi just wants to gewt along with his loife like I want, too, I get - and got! - along. With parade-marchers I cannot - and I don't even want.

Some people get born with one psychological gender, trapped in a body of the other physical sex. It happens sometimes. It is great vdrama and tragey, and great suffering for the affected individual. The problem exists, but that does not make it "normal". - Some people are genetically predetermined to be homosexual. Fine. Let them. But they are not the natural norm in our species' design, nor is it equal in significance to the dominant and evolutionary wanted norm in our species: heterosexual orientation, that is.

There have been theories that maybe homosexuality may have some indirect and so far undiscovered effect on the genepool of a species, "indirectly" by influencing the mating frequency of heterosexual partners (lowering it), and thus effecting the stirring of combinations in the genepool, or that it may have an effect in terms of stimulating mutations by reducing the mixture of the next generation'S genes. Others wanted to construct parallels to known precedences like diseases killing parts of a population, but immunizing against another, more dangerous epidemia (like for example malaria immunizes against sichel-cell-anemia). But these theories, if one wants to call them like this, so far have been extremely unfounded, speculative and unreasonable imo, and seem to be more motivated by constructing an argument for declaring homosexuality natural in the meaning of being as important as heterosexuality. Lot'S of agendas out there, and unfortunately the ideologic warfare does not stop short of sciences, but not rarely corrupts scientific methodology. And then it becomes worthless.

Back to the gardeners' discussion.