A reporter recently commenting on the gay animal exhibit in Norway posed a couple of interesting questions. "How can we know that an animal is homosexual?" "How can homosexual behavior be consistent with what we have learned about evolution and Darwinism?"

Perhaps the troubling answer to the first question is that there is no such thing as a homosexual animal, human or otherwise. And the answer to the second question is found in the fact that Darwin himself was limited by Victorian mores and had a culturally-limited view of sexual behavior beyond the function of procreation.

Personally, I think both questions become irrelevant if you approach them from a very different direction: pure science. As science advances, it often finds that it has made mistakes and miscategorized and mislabeled behaviors, patterns and phenomena. Sometimes these mistakes are a result of incomplete knowledge; other times they are a result of prejudice and cultural bias.

Pity poor Pluto.

Science has often been shaped over the centuries to conform with religious, political and social beliefs. It obviously still happens today.



But supposing we cast aside the sexual categories imposed by religion and consider that sex is a biological phenomenon that serves a number of purposes. After all, Mother Nature has shown herself many times to be quite efficient and frugal; the original multi-tasker. The more complex an organism the more true that seems to be.

Consider the human mouth. An amazing orifice that delivers an alternative breathing system, communication, various forms of pleasure, defensive and offensive mechanisms and fuel.

Consider sex. An amazing phenomenon that delivers stress relief, emotional gratification, an extraordinary and complex range of social bonding, procreation, communication and defensive and offensive mechanisms.

Has science made a profound mistake by allowing religion and prejudice to organize human sexuality according to categories based on non-scientific methods?

Perhaps there is no such thing as a homosexual. Perhaps humans are complex and highly advanced sexual beings who engage in many forms of sexual expression serving many species needs and purposes.

Perhaps human sexuality needs to be much more rigorously examined by science with the understanding that homosexuals don't exist but rather homosexual activity in its many variations is just one subset of many variations and degrees of human sexual activity that serve dozens if not hundreds of purposes.

It is that diversity of interaction and intimacy that we observe among thousands of animal species. And when we, or a museum in Norway, insists on categorizing these animals and calling some of them gay or bi-sexual, are we not guilty of religion-based anthropomorphism?

Perhaps we are wrong to define animals, including humans by gay and straight but rather we should be examining the rich diversity of sexual behaviors in terms of the role each behavior plays in social bonding and the preservation, success and unity of the species.

To narrow the role of sex to procreation is as foolish as narrowing the role of the mouth to eating: both important functions but not the only ones.

Defining human sexuality according to religious texts and Victorian mores is analogous to explaining the history of this planet through the eyes of a creationist.