{"id":963,"date":"2006-10-22T02:20:07","date_gmt":"2006-10-22T01:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=963"},"modified":"2008-06-18T22:21:58","modified_gmt":"2008-06-18T21:21:58","slug":"the-birds-and-the-bees-and-the-higher-primates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2006\/10\/22\/the-birds-and-the-bees-and-the-higher-primates\/","title":{"rendered":"The birds and the bees (and the higher primates)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Natural History Museum of Oslo University has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nhm.uio.no\/againstnature\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">opened an exhibition<\/a> dedicated to homosexuality in the animal kingdom.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Today we know that homosexuality is a common and widespread phenomenon in the animal world. Not only short-lived sexual relationships, but even long-lasting partnerships; partnerships that may last a lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>The exhibit puts on display a small selection among the more than 1500 species where homosexuality have been observed. This fascinating story of the animals&#8217; secret life is told by means of models, photos, texts and specimens. The visitor will be confronted with all sorts of creatures from tiny insects to enormous spermwhales.<\/p>\n<p>How can we know that an animal is homosexual? How can homosexual behaviour be consistent with what we have learned about evolution and Darwinism?<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, most museums have no traditions for airing difficult, concealed, and possibly controversial questions. Homosexuality is certainly such a question. We feel confident that a greater understanding of how extensive and common this behaviour is among animals, will help to de-mystify homosexuality among people. At least, we hope to reject the all too well known argument that homosexual behaviour is a crime against nature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Naturally (ahem), this has attracted the ire of the usual god-botherers who are happy to ignore inconvenient Scriptural declarations about loving your neighbour when sending the museum directors hate mail. Unfortunately for the bigots, evidence about homosexuality being very much a part of the natural world continues to mount (pardon the pun again&#8230;), as shown in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seedmagazine.com\/news\/2006\/06\/the_gay_animal_kingdom.php\" target=\"_blank\">an article<\/a> in US science magazine, <em>Seed<\/em>, earlier this year. That won&#8217;t convince the American (and other) Talibans, of course, but then if it was up to them we&#8217;d still be burning witches and thinking that the sun orbited the earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Natural History Museum of Oslo University has opened an exhibition dedicated to homosexuality in the animal kingdom. Today we know that homosexuality is a common and widespread phenomenon in the animal world. Not only short-lived sexual relationships, but even long-lasting partnerships; partnerships that may last a lifetime. The exhibit puts on display a small &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2006\/10\/22\/the-birds-and-the-bees-and-the-higher-primates\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The birds and the bees (and the higher primates)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,31,13],"tags":[141],"class_list":["post-963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gay","category-religion","category-science","tag-insects"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-fx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}