[color=#88000]"Nature’s Case for Same-Sex Marriage" By DAVID GEORGE HASKELL New York Times Published: March 29, 2013 "BIOLOGY has returned to the nation’s highest court. It’s not Darwin’s theory of evolution on the docket this time, but the nature of sex. Defenders of Proposition 8, California’s ban on gay marriage, base their case on what they call the “objective biological fact” that procreation is an exclusively heterosexual process. Citing the 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, they argue that marriage should be “founded in nature.” This invocation of nature echoes other voices. Last December, before Pope Benedict XVI resigned, he used his Christmas greetings to the Roman Curia to deplore what he called a “new philosophy of sexuality” that manipulates and denies nature. Roy S. Moore, re-elected last fall as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, once let rip with less measured language, exclaiming in a child-custody case that homosexuality was “a crime against nature and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” Meanwhile, Tennessee legislators have repeatedly sought the prohibition of any sexual education “inconsistent with natural human reproduction.” None of this is, in fact, new: Oscar Wilde’s trials hinged on the courts’ understanding of natural love and unnatural vice. References to biology coat these arguments with a gloss of scientific rigor. But before we write nature into law, let’s take a stroll outside the Supreme Court’s chambers and check those biological facts. Descending the steps of the court, we enter Washington’s planted landscape, a formal park where nature stands alongside patriotic monuments and federal buildings. There is no shortage of counsel about biology here. The grandeur of the National Mall is rightly famous. Less well known are the hermaphroditic sex lives of many of its inhabitants. Japanese cherry trees break bud in explosions of pink; male and female coexist at the heart of each flower. The American elms that frame the Mall’s lawns present a more reserved countenance to the world. But their inconspicuous lime-green flowers are biologically bisexual. Ginkgo, another tree common in Washington, follows a Prop 8-approved sexual separation, growing as discrete males and females. But even the ginkgo will sometimes surprise horticulturalists with a stray flower of the other sex. An inspection of the bark of these trees reveals garden snails grazing on thin, vertical lawns of lichens, yeasts and algae. Like the trees, each sexually mature snail makes both egg and sperm. Mating among these gastropods is charged with romantic tension; two males and two females are caught up in every embrace. Downstream from the Mall, at the outlet of the Potomac, marine snails called slipper shells add yet another twist: they begin life as males, before maturing into females. The snails on the trees graze on fungi that further enrich the Mall’s sexual diversity. Fungi don’t have “sexes,” as most humans understand the term. Subtle chemical markers on each fungal cell divide the species into “mating types.” In some species, dozens of such types occur. Some of these fungal cells — like the slipper shells — can’t resist the itch to switch types. Looking up from the fungi, we see a bee with its head buried in a cherry blossom’s mop of reproductive parts, supping on sweet nectar, and a northern cardinal fusses in the foliage, seeking early-hatched caterpillars. If these birds and bees were the first to teach us about sex, we’ve forgotten part of the lesson. Just as some species that are mostly hermaphroditic contain unisexual individuals, some insects and vertebrates cannot be simply called male or female. Human biology joins in this rejection of binary claims of male and female. There is controversy in the scientific literature about how many people are intersex, but some estimates put the figure at up to 2 percent. Of course, sexuality is more than an arrangement of cells. Bonds form between sexual partners that help define the social structure of each species. What does nature on the Mall teach us about these relationships? Look, for instance, at the mallards paddling in the nearby reflecting pools. If they are like mallards elsewhere, then one in 10 of them engage in homosexual sex. Stepping from the northern border of the Mall into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, we come face-to-taxidermied-face with our great ape relatives. Before these apes were sequestered in museum cabinets, homosexual bonds were a natural part of their lives. This is especially true for our closest living cousins, the bonobos and chimpanzees. The facts of biology plainly falsify the oft-repeated notion that homosexuality is unnatural. Every species has evolved its own sexual ecology, and so nature resists generalizations. Does humanity’s natural inheritance include homosexual bonds and behaviors? Certainly. This conclusion is reinforced by the growing evidence that our sexual orientation is influenced by both our genes and the environment that we experience in the womb. A wide, living rainbow arcs across the natural world. Diversity rules in sexuality, just as it does in the rest of biology. This natural variety does not provide ready-made moral guidance. But to claim that the only natural forms of sex and pair bonding occur between unambiguous males and females is to ignore the facts of human biology. Let those who wish for marriage to be “founded in nature” take note: the view outside the Supreme Court is full of life’s beautiful sexual variegation."---[/color]http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/opinion/natures-case-for-same-sex-marriage.html?_r=0 List of animals exhibiting homosexual behavior: "For these animals, there is documented evidence of homosexual behavior of one or more of the following kinds: sex, courtship, affection, pair bonding, or parenting, as noted in researcher and author Bruce Bagemihl's 1999 book Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. Bagemihl writes that the presence of same-sex sexual behavior was not 'officially' observed on a large scale until the 1990s due to possible observer bias caused by social attitudes towards LGBT people making the homosexual theme taboo.[2][3] Bagemihl devotes three chapters; Two Hundred Years at Looking at Homosexual Wildlife, Explaining (Away) Animal Homosexuality and Not For Breeding Only in his 1999 book Biological Exuberance to the "documentation of systematic prejudices" where he notes "the present ignorance of biology lies precisely in its single-minded attempt to find reproductive (or other) "explanations" for homosexuality, transgender, and non-procreative and alternative heterosexualities.[4] Petter Bøckman, academic adviser for the Against Nature? exhibit stated "[M]any researchers have described homosexuality as something altogether different from sex. They must realise that animals can have sex with who they will, when they will and without consideration to a researcher's ethical principles". Homosexual behavior is found amongst social birds and mammals, particularly the sea mammals and the primates.[3] Animal sexual behavior takes many different forms, even within the same species and the motivations for and implications of their behaviors have yet to be fully understood. Bagemihl's research shows that homosexual behavior, not necessarily sex, has been observed in about 1500 species, ranging from primates to gut worms, and is well documented for 500 of them.[5][6] Homosexuality in animals is seen as controversial by social conservatives because it asserts the naturalness of homosexuality in humans, while others counter that it has no implications and is nonsensical to equate animal behavior to morality.[7][8] Animal preference and motivation is always inferred from behavior. Thus homosexual behavior has been given a number of terms over the years. The correct usage of the term homosexual is that an animal exhibits homosexual behavior, however this article conforms to the usage by modern research[9][10][11][12] applying the term homosexuality to all sexual behavior (copulation, genital stimulation, mating games and sexual display behavior) between animals of the same sex. Contents 2 Mammals 3 Birds 4 Fish 5 Reptiles 6 Amphibians 7 Insects 8 Other invertebrates This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries. Mammals Bison[16] Brown Bear[17] Brown Rat[18] Caribou[19] Cat (domestic)[20] Cattle (domestic)[21] Chimpanzee[22][23][24][25] Common Dolphin[26] Common Marmoset[27] Dog[28] Elephant[29] Fox[30] Giraffe[31][3][32] Goat[16] Horse (domestic)[33] Human[34][35][36] Koala[37] Lion[34] Orca[26] Raccoon[38] Birds Barn Owl[39] Chicken[40] Common Gull[41] Emu[42] King Penguin[43] Mallard[44] Raven[45] Seagull[46] Fish Amazon molly[48] Blackstripe topminnow[49] Bluegill Sunfish[49] Char[47] Grayling[47] European Bitterling[50] Green swordtail[50] Guiana leaffish[51] Houting Whitefish[47] Jewel Fish[52] Least Darter (Microperca punctulata)[50] Mouthbreeding Fish sp.[49] Salmon spp.[53] Southern platyfish[50] Ten-spined stickleback[50] Three-spined stickleback[50] Reptiles Anole sp.[54] Bearded Dragon[55] Broad-headed Skink[50] Checkered Whiptail Lizard[55] Chihuahuan Spotted Whiptail Lizard[55] Common Ameiva[55] Common Garter Snake[50] Cuban Green Anole[54] Desert Grassland Whiptail Lizard[55] Desert Tortoise[56] Fence Lizard[55] Five-lined Skink[disambiguation needed][50] Gopher (Pine) Snake[49] Green Anole[54] Inagua Curlytail Lizard[55] Jamaican Giant Anole[54] Laredo Striped Whiptail Lizard[55] Largehead Anole[54] Mourning Gecko[57] Plateau Striped Whiptail Lizard[55] Red Diamond Rattlesnake[50] Red-tailed Skink[50] Side-blotched Lizard[55] Speckled Rattlesnake[50] Water Moccasin[50] Western rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis)[50] Western Banded Gecko[57] Whiptail Lizard spp.[55] Wood Turtle[54] Amphibians Appalachian Woodland Salamander[58] Black-spotted Frog[59] Mountain Dusky Salamander[58] Tengger Desert Toad[54] Insects Alfalfa Weevil[60] Australian Parasitic Wasp sp.[60] Bean Weevil sp.[60] Bedbug and other Bug spp.[61][62] Blister Beetle spp.[63] Blowfly[63] Broadwinged Damselfly sp.[64] Cabbage (Small) White (Butterfly)[65] Checkerspot Butterfly[65] Club-tailed Dragonfly spp.[66] Cockroach spp.[67] Common Skimmer Dragonfly spp.[66] Creeping Water Bug sp.[68] Cutworm[69] Digger Bee[70] Dragonfly spp.[66] Eastern Giant Ichneumon Wasp[60] Eucalyptus Longhorned Borer[68] Field Cricket sp.[71] Flour Beetle[72] Fruit Fly spp.[73] Glasswing Butterfly[65] Grape Berry Moth[74] Grape Borer[68] Green Lacewing[75] Hen Flea[75] House Fly[76] Ichneumon wasp sp.[60] Japanese Scarab Beetle[77] Larch Bud Moth[74] Large Milkweed Bug[62] Large White[62] Long-legged Fly spp.[78] Mazarine Blue[62] Mediterranean Fruit Fly[73] Mexican White (butterfly)[62] Midge sp.[78] Migratory Locust[79] Monarch Butterfly[65] Narrow-winged Damselfly spp.[64] Parsnip Leaf Miner[78] Pomace fly[78] Queen Butterfly[65] Red Ant sp.[78] Red Flour Beetle[62] Reindeer Warble Fly (Hypoderma tarandi)[78] Rose Chafer[disambiguation needed][78] Rove Beetle spp.[62] Scarab Beetle (Melolonthine)[80] Screwworm Fly[78] Silkworm Moth[74] Male flour beetles are believed by scientists to engage in same-sex coupling to practice mating and to rid themselves of "old, less effective" sperm.[72] Southeastern Blueberry Bee[70] Southern Green Stink Bug[62] Southern Masked Chafer[78] Southern One-Year Canegrub[78] Spreadwinged Damselfly spp.[64] Spruce Budworm Moth[74] Stable Fly sp.[78] Stag Beetle spp.[62] Tsetse Fly[78] Water Boatman Bug[disambiguation needed][62] Water Strider spp.[62] Other invertebrates Blood-Fluke[81] Box Crab[82] Harvest Spider sp.[83] Hawaiian Orb-Weaver (spider)[83] Incirrate Octopus spp.[82] Jumping Spider and Some Select Yeast sp.[83] Mite sp.[78] Spiny-Headed Worm[84] Amoeba and Barneys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior
First of all, I'd like to state that I'm not going to be all science-y and shit, so don't come back with a reply telling me about hormones, brain impulses or some other shit like that. Another thing: I'm heterosexual. So this is the argument I have to bring: Why, in God's beautiful earth, should we give a single fuck if two men (or women) want to put a gold band on each other's fingers? I couldn't care if something a group of people do conflicts with your beliefs. We live in a day and age where we wear clothes, live in houses and have politics. We are no longer merely wild animals. People deserve the right to have their own wants, desires (within reason) and urges. And I'm sorry if I sound as if I'm sticking up for homosexual people, because I'm not. I seriously couldn't give a fuck. I believe gay people have as many rights as we do, but why should that offend me, or other people? If you or God think that being gay is 'evil', 'a disease' or 'a violation against nature' you're BOTH IDIOTS.
