Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

Many scientists’ denial that same-sex courtship, sexual, pair-bonding, and/or parenting activities should be put in the category of “homosexuality” are based on spurious or overly restrictive interpretations of the phenomenon (or the word). For example, Konrad Lorenz claims that gander pairs in Greylag Geese are not actually “homosexual” because sexual behavior is not necessarily an important component of such associations (not all members of gander pairs engage in sexual activity), and because not all such birds pair exclusively with other males over their entire lifetime. By the same criteria, however, opposite-sex pairs would fail to qualify as “heterosexual”: sexual activity is not an important component of male-female pairings in this species (as Lorenz himself acknowledges), and not all such birds pair exclusively with opposite-sex partners during their lives. Yet Lorenz has no qualms about labeling such pairs “heterosexual.”⁴⁴ In fact, what we have here is simply an attempt to equate homosexuality with only one characteristic or type of same-sex activity (sexual versus pair-bonding, or sequential bisexuality versus exclusive homosexuality).

In a parallel discussion of female pairs in Western Gulls, one researcher suggests that previous descriptions of such pairs as “homosexual” or “lesbian” or “gay” is inappropriate because they do not resemble homosexual pairings in humans.⁴⁵ But which homosexual pairings, in which humans? As discussed in chapter 2, there is no single type of same-sex pair-bonding in people: homosexual couples differ vastly in a wide range of factors such as their sexual behavior, social status, formation process, sexual orientation of members, participation in parenting, duration, and so on, and they vary enormously between different cultures, historical periods, and individuals. Assuming, however, that this author is referring to Euro-American lesbian couples, it is difficult to see what specific similarities are required before the label of homosexual would be considered acceptable. Same-sex pairs in both Gulls and humans engage in a variety of courtship, pair-bonding, sexual, and parenting activities and exhibit parallel variability in their formation, social status, and the sexual orientation of their partners. In fact, it is fallacious to suggest that a same-sex activity should resemble some human behavior before we can label it homosexual. A more reasonable approach (the one used in this book as well as in many scientific sources) is to take comparable behaviors in the same or closely related species as the point of reference: any activity between two animals of the same sex that involves behaviors independently recognized (usually in heterosexual contexts) as courtship, sexual, pair-bonding, or parenting activities is classified as “homosexual.” By this criterion, same-sex pairs of Gulls are “homosexual” because all of the characteristics they exhibit are well-established components of pair-bonding in heterosexual pairs of the same species—to the extent that same-sex couples have often been mistaken for heterosexual ones and unhesitatingly labeled a “mated pair” before their true sex was discovered.