Homosexual Behaviors Animals as an Argument for It Being "OK" In Humans - Need Help Refuting

[InSearchofGrace]

Despite from the fact that CradleCath is not a zoologist and only has experience in farm animals. The swan study I posted is not a work of fiction, unless you can prove otherwise.

I must have missed your post with the swan study link, so I have not read it until you pointed it out. If you are assuming my mention of ‘non-fiction stories’ is a swipe in response to your post, let me hereby correct you. I stated it because CradleCath provided a first-hand account or observation based on 25 years of experience.

I do not question the observation at the Dorset swannery of a pair of male swans over several nesting periods, by the manager and one other employee. But the article neither says they are zoologists nor does it indicate that their account is a formal scientific study.

CradleCath offered his experience with farm animals collaborating the explanations in the article The Animal Homosexuality Myth. He spoke as an observer too, one who worked with cows and bulls for a quarter of a century. That lends credibility to his story even if he is not a zoologist and he did not conduct a scientific study. So we both have observational accounts, no?

The Myth article that CradleCath and I discussed, however, makes references to opinions of scientists who reached, among others, the following persuasive conclusions:

There is no homosexual instinct in animals. They are exposed and respond to clashing stimuli and behave from confused animal instinct at times. Hence, they are known to act in abnormal ways, like filicide and cannibalism, including what we humans read as homosexuality in their behavior.

Animals lack the means to express their affective states. Since animals lack reason, their means of expressing their affective states (fear, pleasure, pain, desire, etc.) are limited. Animals lack the rich resources at man’s disposal to express his sentiments. Man can adapt his way of talking, writing, gazing, gesturing in untold ways. Animals cannot. Consequently, animals often express their affective states ambiguously. They “borrow,” so to speak, the manifestations of the instinct of reproduction to manifest the instincts of dominance, aggressiveness, fear, gregariousness and so on.

It is unscientific to “read” human motivation and sentiment into animal behavior. Dr. Charles Socarides of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) observes:

The term homosexuality should be limited to the human species, for in animals the investigator can ascertain only motor behavior. As soon as he interprets the animal’s motivation he is applying human psychodynamics–a risky, if not foolhardy scientific approach.

You can read the whole article for yourself as there are other interesting findings and conclusions that can effectively challenge your belief that there is animal homosexuality.

I am not vested in the belief that there is or there is no homosexuality in animals. But the linked article I provided contains compelling arguments to the latter.

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[davidv]

This is absolutely nonsensical. The suggestion that gay men and women choose their emotional and sexual orientation beggars belief. We are not slaves to our sexuality, and thus we all as Catholics are called to chastity outside of marriage: however, our sexual identities are largely inscripted beyond our will.

Pray provide a single ounce of evidence for your contemptuous assertion that: ‘men nor women are not born homosexual.’

Do you have any legitimate source indicating the contrary? Based on all the info I have come upon, the nature of the origin of SSA is large unknown. It certainly cannot be proven that “they are born that way”.

 

[Exalt]

There are many things that occur in the animal kingdom, that would not be Godly, moral, or appropriate by human standards… We are humans, made in the image of God, animals are not.

It’s almost as if the ‘naturalness’ of something has no bearing at all on it’s morality or not.

 

[davidv]

It’s almost as if the ‘naturalness’ of something has no bearing at all on it’s morality or not.

Actually it has everything to do with what is moral. The problem is in defining “natural”. In Catholic teaching, from a moral perspective, “natural” is that which God intended. In this context, “natural” does not mean that which occurs in nature. That which occurs in nature includes disordered things, so this cannot not be the basis for defining naturalness.

 

[Elizabeth502]

Well one argument could be that humans are much more than just an animal. We have much higher intelligence and a higher level of understanding of this. Comparing us to a simple animal is degrading and therefore can’t really be an argument. Marriage should stay between a man and a woman like the bible professed.

Indeed. The entire Catholic moral framework is built around human beings being possessed of a conscious will, the ability to balance decisions rationally and carry out rational acts, as opposed to merely reacting physiologically, or by adaptation, to a situation. Unlike animals, we are not controlled by our physical impulses, in most situations. That does not mean we cannot and do not fantasize about unnatural or otherwise disordered acts: we do. Sometimes such fantasies are in themselves sinful (if we indulge them); at other times they are “merely” difficult-to-resist temptations requiring prayer, discipline, counsel, fasting, sacraments, support groups, and more.

Lots of us are born “disposed” to various bad habits and/or disorders. Our active surrender to those does not make them less sinful; it makes them a more urgent reason to seek spiritual help, and possibly even psychological help – depending on the disorder, whether it rises to the level of compulsion, addiction, etc.

Animals are not responsible for their behavior, as their behavior is largely instinctual, reactive, and adaptive (all physiologically driven). Even when they seem to mimic human choices (such as domestic pets “preferring” some humans over others), those are in themselves reactions (to validation by humans with whom they socialize, to reward by those humans, to reinforcing physical stimuli such as touch, scent, etc.)

We are NOT a collection of physiological responses. We are much more than that, much more glorious than that, and therefore much more is required of us to control our impulses to the order of God’s natural creation.

That’s just for starters…

 

[Hastrman]

Short answer: homosexual couplings occur among animals. So do forced matings and killing the offspring of a previous dominant male. Are we in favor of those things? How about nuptial cannibalism?

 

[LemonAndLime]

Short answer: homosexual couplings occur among animals. So do forced matings and killing the offspring of a previous dominant male. Are we in favor of those things? How about nuptial cannibalism?

The flaw in that argument though however is that in Catholics use the Lev quote to justify not allowing homosexual unions. Does that mean that we advocate the killing of teenagers if they disobey their parents? That’s also seen in Lev.

No it doesn’t, because we pick and choose from Lev. Therefore people who use the animal kingdom argument can also pick and choose from animal behaviours, if we can as Catholics.

 

[Kay_Cee]

I would ask if we’re really supposed to take our behavioral cues from lower life forms.

 

[estesbob]

Some animals eat their young. Does that make it okay for me to do s?.

 

[Hastrman]

The flaw in that argument though however is that in Catholics use the Lev quote to justify not allowing homosexual unions. Does that mean that we advocate the killing of teenagers if they disobey their parents? That’s also seen in Lev.

No it doesn’t, because we pick and choose from Lev. Therefore people who use the animal kingdom argument can also pick and choose from animal behaviours, if we can as Catholics.

I don’t recall ever using the purity code of the Old Covenant as a justification for my positions relating to the Natural Law—which is the only moral law under the New Covenant.

The “see, it’s natural, animals do it” thing is, in fact, essentially a strawman argument, based on the two senses of the word “natural”. Natural means both “happens in nature” and “consonant with a given thing’s nature”, i.e. “proper” or “fitting”. “Natural law” only refers to the second, but people deliberately try to play on the equivocal nature of the term, and pretend it refers to the first.