Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

Greylag Goose (Lorenz 1991:241-43) (see also Lorenz’s own assertion, in this same passage, that such male pairs are not simply platonic “friendships” between males but are equivalent to male-female mated pairs). Analogously, Kortlandt (1949) (Great Cormorant) labels same-sex pairs “pseudohomosexual” rather than “homosexual” if their members later form heterosexual bonds, once again equating “true” homosexuality with lifetime, exclusive same-sex pairing. See chapter 2 for more on the dubious notion of “true” homosexuality and its relation to more sophisticated characterizations of sexual orientation. Lorenz’s unwillingness to apply the term homosexual to gander pairs and thereby invite human-animal comparisons (or imply full heterosexual-homosexual equivalence) is especially problematic in light of his activities during the Third Reich. As a member of the Nazi party in Austria and an official lecturer for its Office of Race Policy, Lorenz did not hesitate to draw analogies between animals and people to support and develop the doctrines of “biological degeneracy,” “racial purity,” and the “elimination” of “inferior” or “asocial” elements (Deichmann, U. [1996] Biologists under Hitler, especially “Konrad Lorenz, Ethology, and National Socialist Racial Doctrine,” pp. 179-205. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Among his most blatant assertions in this regard are statements (in 1943) that physical and moral “decay” in people is “identical” to the effects of domestication on animals and (in 1940) that the “defective type” among humans is like “the domesticated animal that can be bred in the dirtiest stable and with any sexual partner” (ibid., pp. 186, 188; cf. Lorenz’s [1935/1970:203] surmise that same-sex pairing in Jackdaws only occurs in captive animals and is not a feature of “natural” populations). He also asserted (in 1941) that “Precisely in the large field of instinctive behavior, humans and animals can be directly compared … . We confidently venture to predict that these studies will be fruitful for both theoretical as well as practical concerns of race policy” (ibid., p. 186). The subject of how the antihomosexual climate of Nazi Germany and the Nazi sympathies of some biologists helped shape the scientific discourse on animal homosexuality deserves further investigation. Many zoological studies of this phenomenon, after all, were written in Germany and Austria during this period or were heavily influenced by work that had its genesis during this time. Moreover, one of the earliest scientific surveys of animal homosexuality (Karsh, “Päderastie und Tribadie bei den Tieren” [1990]), appeared in the periodical Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Sexual Intermediate Types), published by the noted Jewish homosexual Magnus Hirschfield, whose mammoth archives and library of sexology were later destroyed by the Nazis.

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Western Gull (Hayward and Fry 1993). See also Diamond and Burns, who suggest that same-sex pairing in Gulls should be referred to as “joint brooding” or “coparenting” rather than as homosexuality, thereby emphasizing its supposed reproductive functions (Diamond, M., and J. A. Burns [1995] “Human-Nonhuman Comparisons in Sex: Valid and Invalid,” paper presented at the 24^th International Ethological Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii). For arguments that same-sex pairing is not primarily a reproductive behavior, see chapters 4 and 5.

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For examples of scientists who use the term homosexual (or lesbian or gay) even when no overt sexual activity is involved (i.e., to refer to related behaviors such as courtship, pairing, or parenting), see Sauer 1972 (Ostrich), Nethersole-Thompson 1975 (Scottish Crossbill), Wingfield et al. 1980 (Western Gull), Braithwaite 1981 (Black Swan), Smith 1988 (Lyrebird), Diamond 1989 (Snow Goose), Reed 1993 (Black Stilt).

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