Is homosexuality natural?

Sometimes I make a post on a forum or discussion thread that I think is worthwhile enough to post here. Apologies if this seems cheap but a particularly interesting one arose recently. The issue of “is homosexuality natural” on my MRAS YouTube group as it happens. Why not join and join in on the discussion?

Here is the opening post:

actually..I didnt agree with it a bit. The ACT itself is unnatural. Homosexuality cannot sustain itself.It needs hetrosexuals to survive. If it was natural it would be able to sustain itself like other natural things. When he speaks of oppisites he is wrong. There is no such thing as dark.....only the absense of light.

…

creepyguy...life really aint that complicated. So would you say beastiality...polygamy....paedophilia.... are not unnatural=bad things?

My post:

When discussing this issue it is important that we rigidly decide our terms of discourse.

“Natural” purely means “formed by nature”. Homosexuality exists in a lot of other animal species apart from our own. In this sense homosexuality is indeed natural, so is paedophilia and bestiality.

But you muddied the waters by making a moral equivalence. Essentially natural=good and unnatural=bad. There is no basis for this. An animal species that is an evolutionary dead end and which is doomed for extinction is still formed by nature. Natural isn’t necessarily good. So we as a culture can create a moral code as to what we will accept and what we won’t, be it natural or unnatural. Medicine is also unnatural because they were not formed by nature, their ingredients were but medicine is a creation of man, not of nature.

Also, we don’t say that because man is natural and formed medicine therefore medicine is natural as well. We don’t apply an inheritance chain to this otherwise everything would turn out to be natural and the term would lose all its meaning.

Here are some sources:

Bestiality in nature: Mating toads leap the species barrier.

Homosexuality in nature: 1,500 animal species practice homosexuality

Posted under: Skepticism, Feedback, Science
Posted on: Wednesday, December 02, 2009 11:42 PM
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Comments

  1. Posted by: Mith on 12/3/2009 3:22 AM
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    Ah, classic example of people using loose terms.

    In any case, this poster is obviously posting what he's feeling. Just like someone would call a deforming disease unnatural or someone with a disfigured look, they view homosexuality as something unnatural because they aren't comfortable with it.

    Sadly, things like the Gay Pride Parade doesn't exactly help that image either. Rather than putting themselves forward as respectful members of society who aren't a danger, they decide to act like the nightmareas that homophobic people have.
  2. Posted by: ArgusEyes on 12/3/2009 8:51 AM
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    Believe me, I am no lover of the tactics of many gay activists. Like many movements they have embraced victim grievance and used it as an excuse to act badly.

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The umbrella in particular is remembered as the symbol of the nineteenth century’s disturbing obsession with individualism. In Bellamy’s utopia, umbrellas have been replaced with retractable canopies so that everyone is protected from the rain equally.
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