"Supposedly humans know right from wrong, animals don't. Many animals kill their young. Some fish not only kill their young, they eat them."
Good point. The animal parallels are a poor source of justification for human behavior.
The Bonobo monkeys copulate to establish and maintain the social pecking order in the troup. In a conflict the lower standing animal will assume a receptive female posture and the dominant animal will mount the loser momentarily as a mutual assertion of dominance. If neither assumes the submissive posture then a real fight will occur. These sexual encounters will generally not involve penetration. A squabble between two females will often result in the more dominant female going through the motions of mounting the other female and thrusting away for a few seconds.
Adult males have also been observed doing the same to infant monkeys. If animal homosexuality lends some legitimacy to human homosexuality then pedophilia is also okay by logical extention.
In birds with lifelong pair bonds, sometimes two males pair with a single female making a three way bond. This three way family has a better ability to provide for and protect the young. The two males only mount the female and the relationship is not truly homosexual. If something happens to the female, the two males generally stay together for life and may present male courtship behaviour to each other but they don't have sex because neither of them play the part of the female.
The use of animal behaviour as a rationale for homosexuality is a stretching the evidence to fit.
Hey everybody, new guy here. Will try to post as much as I can. I am a homosexual, conservative, not for gay marriage. It is a real struggle to be a homosexual. I don't condone homosexual acts but wish people would understand it feels normal for a homosexual man to be attracted to another man. I agree something went wrong, what went wrong, I wish I knew. I would give anything to be straight. But believe me, its not a choice. But I do believe its choice for a small amount of people.
Posted this in the wrong article before, sorry for the repeat.
Excellent explanation. I have only one point of divergence from it: The type of social dominance vs. submissive behavior described in the Bonobo monkeys is not about sex at all. It's about power and status in the troupe. Power and status are constantly being tested by younger animals, and shifts as animals age or become sick and injured.
Although it takes a form of physical expression we humans consider to be intimate contact, to the monkeys it's not intimate whatsoever.
And that's the point: We humans primarily use vocal and written speech to communicate with one another. Most other species use touch, body language and vocalizations.
Other animals that live in social groups have similar behaviors which take different forms of physical expression. For example, dominant wolves will snarl and growl at subservient wolves. The latter will tuck their tails and, when necessary, lay down on their backs and offer the dominant wolf their neck and belly. Both males and females do this for the alpha male and alpha female. If we humans choose to apply our own sexual viewpoints to that behavior, we can certainly see homosexual overtones in it. But it's nothing of the kind.
In pet dogs, some individuals will attempt to hump humans. Most people assume this to be abberrant sexual behavior. In fact, it's nothing of the kind. It's dominance behavior. The dog is not trying to mate with the person, but to bully the person.
They mention ostriches without telling the whole truth. In that species, male ostriches raise the young, and two or more males may band together to protect their babies.
It's the opposite in elephants, which are a matriarchal species. Elephants constantly touch and reassure one another. I have no doubt that, should a researcher choose to see it that way, some gestures among a band of females could seem homosexual to human sensibilities.
In short, if a researcher goes out deliberately looking for what humans consider to be homosexual behavior, they can easily find examples — even though it isn't such behavior at all.