In an article that appeared in The Seattle Times entitled “Animals Exhibit “Gay” Behavior” (19 June 2005), we find this fascinating sentence: “From whales to buffalo to Caspian terns, a profusion of animals exhibit behavior that in humans would be called gay”.* And, of course, there is the story of the gay penguins in the Central Park Zoo reported in The San Francisco Chronicle (7 February 2004). We are told that “For six years now, they have been inseparable. . . . [T]hey entwine their necks, they vocalize to each other, they have sex. Silo and Roy [the names of the two penguins] are, to anthropomorphize a bit, gay”.
Good science makes it abundantly clear that anthropomorphizing is quite bad science. The issue is this: What might we infer about human beings from animal behavior? The answer is not much. And holding this view has nothing whatsoever to do with being for or against homosexuality among human beings. Consider, for instance, that fidelity in the animal kingdom is relatively rare. All the same, no one supposes that this is thereby a reason to eschew fidelity as an archaic notion of no relevance to human beings. Again, in most instances, though not all, the male bares very little responsibility for raising the children that he sired. Yet, we do not argue for moment that this is how human males should behave. Indeed, our sentiments are exactly the opposite. Then there is the reality that animals have little or no sense of shame with regard to when and where they relieve themselves, whether this is about urinating or defecating. I can only hope that we should not regard this as virtuous.
Getting back to so-called homosexual behavior among animals, we might ask whether animals have anything like a sense of sexual identity that is as robust as that which we find in human beings. Not surprisingly, the answer is a deafening “No”.
Two examples nicely illustrate this. For human beings much significance is attached to the first sexual experience. Whether one is religious or not, the first sexual experience is a defining moment in all sorts of ways. One has crossed a certain important threshold. People can be ashamed for not having yet had a sexual experience; people can be ashamed for having had one. Needless to say, it is rather unlikely that animals are having these concerns.
The second example is that a great many human beings agonize about and attach all sorts of significance to size. Women want bigger breasts; men want a bigger penis. Again, this is not a worry among animals. The male horse, for instance, does not experience pride owing to the thought that he has it all over the male human in terms of penis size. SPAM for bigger breasts and penis size is ubiquitous.
Animals do not have any of the concerns mentioned in the preceding two paragraphs precisely because they do not in the first place have a sense of sexual identity—certainly none as robust as that which we find in human beings.
This is manifestly relevant to how we understand same-sex sexual behavior among animals. How, for example, do the two penguins of the Central Park Zoo understand themselves? Do they see themselves as role models for other penguins? Did they choose to go against the norm? Are the other penguins shocked at such a flagrant violation of penguin norms? None of these questions make any sense precisely because penguins do not have a sense of sexual identity.
Sexual identity is a part of self-identity. And one of the things that comes in the wake of self-identity is both self-evaluation and the evaluation of others. Self-evaluation is not just about seeing differences but attaching varying forms of significance to those differences based upon standards to which one subscribes. It is simply a truth that animals are not running around thinking that “Penis size matters”. The males in the animal kingdom are neither gloating over nor ashamed of their penis size; and the females are not taking surreptitious looks in order to determine who among their male cohorts has the bigger penis.
Consider the various female penguins who tried to mate with Silo and Roy. Surely, none of these females are running around distraught because their hopes were dashed to the ground. Certainly, no female penguin thought to herself “When I offer Silo or Roy this, that will surely change his mind about staying with that other male penguin”, only to end up totally disappointed when either Silo or Roy spurned her. Nor, on the other hand, is Silo or Roy running around proud of his steadfastness with respect to his same-sex preference.
So to call Silo and Roy gay is not just to anthropomorphize a bit. It is to read into their behavior much of the significance that one would attach to analogous behavior on the part of human beings who are in a same-sex committed relationship. That is very bad science.
In the end, then, appealing to animal behavior as some form of justification for human behavior is very tricky business. If we pick some behaviors and eschew others, then we need an independent and defensible principle that explains why some animal behaviors fall on one side of the divide and other animal behaviors fall on the other side of the divide. Appealing to animal behavior as a justification for human behavior is loathsomely self-serving when it turns out that the only animal behaviors that we pick out are those that serve our own ends.
If it were genuinely true that animal behavior really served as a significant measure for what human behavior should be like, then it would turn out, at least once in a while, that we take ourselves to have a reason to change or at least to re-examine our human behavior in light of the behavior that we find among animals. If, however, animal behavior can never provide us human beings with a reason to change our behavior, then the supposition that human behavior presently engaged can be shown to be justified by reference to animal behavior is surely specious reasoning.
This point holds across the board. So the religious, for instance, cannot point to “monogamy” among some bird species as an indication that God meant for monogamy to be a fundamental human value, any more than the promiscuously among us human beings can point to widespread “promiscuity” among animals as an indication this is what human beings should valorize.
Strikingly, we humans do not think for a moment that the behavior of bears is an indication of how monkeys should behave, or conversely. Likewise for whales and dolphins. And so on across the board. So it makes no sense to me that so many are so quick to invoke behavior among animal species as an indication of how the human species should behave.
Nothing I have said entails that homsexuality is morally wrong, although some will undoubtedly suppose that I think. Indeed, it was not the point of anything I have said to establish that conclusion or to make way for doing so. I suspect that many people want science to tell us that all sexual preferences are on a par with one another in precisely the way that science tells us that, insofar as the idea of race or ethnicity makes sense, there is no significant difference of any substance between any two races. The problem is that from the standpoint of evolutionary theory race and sexual orientation are two radically different categories.
* These remarks form part the argument that I shall present at a seminar on “Diversity and Human Rights” that I shall be conducting in March 2007 at Columbia University. Comments are welcome.
