Originally posted by: Atomic Playboy
Originally posted by: bozack
Originally posted by: Atomic Playboy
Still, it would be nice to have that scientific proof to throw back in someone's face when they said the "natural way" of raising children was superior.
The natural way may or may not be "superior" to the vetting process homosexual couples must undergo in order to have children, but it is as you said what nature intended.
I love this one. "What nature intended"... An argument embraced by the religious right when gay marriage or abortion is the topic of discussion, but conveniently ignored when talking about evolution or how God made us to be the greatest of all his creation. If conservatives are so desperate to protect the natural order of things, how come you find so few of the religious right actively involved in the conservation movement? Or is conservation just unnatural? They deny evolution, so you can't even claim that they're in favor of destroying habitat so animals can evolve quicker... Maybe they're just trying to hasten God's will.
And what did nature intend anyway? I was lucky enough to travel to the Galapagos Islands in 8th Grade. The archipelago is a haven for seabirds, a place where many species go to breed and raise their chicks as it is free from land-based predators. We happened to go during the season when the boobies and albatross were rearing their chicks (there is little in the world uglier than a moulting albatross). Our guide, Rolondo, had grown up in Ecuador and had been a tour guide in the Galapagos since his teens. The depth of knowledge he had about the particulars of the species endemic to the islands was fascinating, as was his ability to recall stories about virtually any species of bird making off with a tourist's hat.
On the first day, we visited Genovesa, where we were delighted to find a colony of Blue Footed Boobies. Rolondo was busy telling us about the mating habits of the birds, and happened to pick out a couple nearby engaged in a courtship dance. While we stood fascinated by the bizarre display, Rolondo began to laugh. As he mustered the words to address our confusion, he began with, "Well, I don't want to offend anybody, we occasionally get some Americans who aren't comfortable with this... these birds are both male."
I, being raised by lesbians and accompanied by a lesbian, was not shocked. But some of our party were, at this point, incredibly confused. "Wait," asked an elderly British man. "Are we to understand that these birds are... homosexual?" "Of course," replied Rolondo, "It's actually surprisingly frequent in the mating pairs that we see in the boobie populations." Obviously his use of the term "mating" was a bit suspect, but the point was clear; boobies have caught "the gay."
So it's clear that homosexuality exists in nature outside of humans. But we're not just talking about homosexuality now, are we? We're talking about gays raising offspring. That's a whole different bag of worms. And for that, I'm going to take us 100 miles south, to the island of Española.
We visited Española on our last day in the islands, to visit the colonies of albatross raising their chicks. Rolondo told us how albatross are one of the few species on Earth that mate for life. Despite spending months apart at sea, albatross can return to the same breeding grounds and remember their mate through an intricate dance the two duplicate. And, like the boobies, some albatross are totally gay.
As we walked along the path, large albatross nests and ugly, ugly albatross goslings (or whatever the hell they're called) on either side of us. Rolondo stopped us in front of an empty nest, dismayed that the pair that shared it were not around. Apparently, one of the breeding pairs of albatrosses had met with an unfortunate fate; it is unknown if one or both parents had died, or simply flown off, but for whatever reason, a young albatross was abandoned before it could fend for itself. Normally this equals a dead albatross chick. But apparently, one of the gay couples, unable to lay fertile eggs, had taken it upon themselves to raise the chick. The gay albatross adopted a baby to keep it from dying.
Gay adoption exists in nature.
So, getting back to that question of what "nature intends"... What, pray tell, does nature intend? To reproduce and pass on genes? Gays aren't going to do that anyway, and they exist in species besides humans, so it's not purely a question of free will. If nature intends that genes are passed on, then a gay couple raising a straight baby to reproductive age is more in line with what nature intends than if that baby were to die, wouldn't you agree?
But that argument is academic anyway, since, when it comes down to it,
nature doesn't intend anything. We like to attach intention to the workings of the world because we ultimately all would like a satisfactory answer to the question, "Why are we here?" that doesn't contain, "random chance." But nature doesn't intend anything for us. It doesn't intend anything for the boobies. It doesn't intend anything because nature is just a word that we use to describe the overwhelming complexity of a diverse biosphere that we simply cannot grasp. Life doesn't have a purpose. It doesn't need one. The purpose is ours.
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