Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Gay Ducks Derail Repopulation Plan

The Christo-fascists always like to proclaim that homosexuality is unnatural and that it does not occur elsewhere in the animal kingdom. The only problem is that the claim - like so much of the bile put out by the professional Christians and the 12th century thinkers at the Vatican - is untrue. This story from the Scientific American is but one latest example of the fact that like it or not, homosexuality DOES occur among some 1,500 species. Not, of course, that the Christianists ever let the truth get in the way of their anti-gay misinformation campaign. Here are some highlights:
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Why are all the good Blue Ducks gay? That's what Cherry, the last remaining lass of her kind in Britain, may be asking herself after two male prospects that might have helped her perpetuate the species fell for one another instead of for her. "They stay together all the time, parading up and down their enclosure and whistling to each other as a male might do with a female he wants to mate with," Paul Stevens, the warden at Arundel Wetland Center, tells the Telegraph.
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The boy birds, Ben and Jerry, were introduced to Cherry, but to no avail. " . . . Feathers flew, however, when Ben and Jerry were shacked up together. "To our surprise, the two males really took to each other and it was obvious that they really liked each other," Stevens said, adding: "Ben and Jerry do make a lovely couple."
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Ben and Jerry aren’t the first gay members of the animal kingdom. Roy and Silo, penguin residents of the Central Park Zoo in New York City, mated there a decade ago — among the 1,500 species that have been observed engaging in homosexual activity.
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The other linked story in the Scientific American had this additional information that no doubt makes The Peter and Laurie Higgins and similar professional anti-gay crusaders go ape shit:
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Homosexual behavior is common in nature, and it plays an important role in survival. . . . researchers are finding that same-sex couplings are surprisingly widespread in the animal kingdom. Roy and Silo belong to one of as many as 1,500 species of wild and captive animals that have been observed engaging in homosexual activity. Researchers have seen such same-sex goings-on in both male and female, old and young, and social and solitary creatures and on branches of the evolutionary tree ranging from insects to mammals.
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many species seem to have ingrained homosexual tendencies that are a regular part of their society. . . . . Researchers are now revealing, for example, that animals may engage in same-sex couplings to diffuse social tensions, to better protect their young or to maintain fecundity when opposite-sex partners are unavailable—or simply because it is fun. These observations suggest to some that bisexuality is a natural state among animals, perhaps Homo sapiens included. . .
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There's a lot more, none of which will make Christianists happy. But then, in my view they are an intensely unhappy lot who seek to inflict their own mental hang ups and misery on others.

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