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Path: utzoo!utcsstat!laura
From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.motss
Subject: Re: Observations on net.motss - homosexuality is a sin
Message-ID: <1454@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 20-Nov-83 05:41:45 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1454
Posted: Sun Nov 20 05:41:45 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Nov-83 06:32:33 EST
References: <598@ssc-vax.UUCP>, <173@apollo.UUCP> <612@ssc-vax.UUCP> <3781@umcp-cs.UUCP>, <3923@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 61

From Speaker-to-Stuffed-Animals

	Let's be very carefull when we make comparisons between humans
	and animals that exhibit homosexual behavior.  Humans do it for
	fun.  The animals may very well think that they are procreating
	and just have their wires crossed.  One expects odd behavior from
	rats if they are placed in an overcrowded environment... an
	'unatural' environement if you will.
	
	On the other hand, many animals (rats too) can learn to modify
	their behavior if the reward is some sort of pleasure.  Laura's
	story about the bull on her uncle's (?) farm is an example that
	could be interpreted wither way.

It was my great-grandfather's farm, but that is not the point. Your
whole argument does not wash. There are human societies that have yet
to connect sex with babies. (I heard a lecture on one group of them
last week -- they are in New Guinea.) Do you really expect that the
rats do? 

However, it really outlines what it is that some people mean by
"natural". They mean that if you aren't going "rah rah procreate!"
all the time, then your sex is unnatural. By that definition, I don't
know a single heterosexual couple that counts as natural.

Now where could this idea, not that the humans *ought* to be thinking
of sex-as-for-procreation-only (an idea which isn't even in favour
with the middle-of-the road Catholics in Toronto!), but that the
animals *already are* have come from? Let me think.

I may be wrong, but my hunch is that it comes from Genesis 1:22
-- the old "be fruitful and multiply bit".  

If this is so, then you have just defined "natural" to mean "in
accordance with my interpretation of the Christian Bible". This
sure isn't my definiton of the word natural, and I am sure that it
is not the one that most people use.

I have a smaller definiton of "natural" than Tim Maroney's (for
instance, if there were no wild colonies of rats that exhibited
that lab behaviour, I would be willing to concede that that was not
natural behaviour for rats) but not so small as to consist of 
somebody else' interpretation of his Holy Book. 

(By the way, lemmings exhibit homosexual behaviour every 7 (I think)
years, under overcrowded situations. Of course they are the same
animals that every seven years "swarm" <much like bees> to
form new colonies due to overpopulation. In lemming swarms, there
is a lot of dinners provided for the Arctic foxes and wolves,
and a lot of lemmings simply dive into the ocean and start swimming for
the other side. They drown, leading people to beliefs of lemming
mass suicides.)

Now. If you want to argue about "correspondance to my interpretaion
of Holy Book X", that is fine. BUT -- not in net.motss, which
is read by a lot of people who don't care about "Holy Book X".
And consider that what you are actually arguing about is not the
NATURALNESS of homosexuality, but the MORALITY of homosexuality.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura