HOMOSEXUALITY IS NOT UNNATURAL. HERE'S WHY.

Homosexuality is a modern puzzle for a lot of people. In Nigeria, explicit homosexuality is prohibited on the threat of 14 years' imprisonment. While the inauguration and enforcement of this law was based almost entirely on social and religious reasons, a common argument that a lot of people have given against homosexuality is biological, at least in their view. Homosexuality is "unnatural" and "against nature," they say. I have even heard someone say "Homosexuality is anti-evolution." But what do they mean when they make statements like this?

In my discussions with several people about this matter, I have found that they generally point to two "biological" meanings of "natural":

1. Homosexuality is not found in nature. It is just the product of human whims and fantasies.
2. Homosexuality ceases procreation. Homosexual couples cannot have children together, making homosexuality unnatural and therefore wrong.

These two claims do not stand the test of scrutiny, and it will be clear why by the end of this article.

The first thing to note about this "biological" argument is the fact that it commits a basic logical fallacy—an appeal to nature. This fallacy occurs when one proposes that some state of affairs X is true, false, right or wrong because it is natural or unnatural. 

Now we will face the two claims earlier highlighted. Let's begin with the first: homosexuality is unnatural because it is not found in nature and is a product of human whims and fantasies. Suppose this were true—that homosexuality is not found in nature and is entirely made up by humans. So what? There are lots of things that are not found in nature which humans do but are not considered immoral or wrong. Sports, fashion, schooling—you name it. If homosexuality is morally wrong on the basis that it is not found in nature, then we must conclude that these things are also all morally wrong.

But second and more importantly, this claim is simply false. Homosexuality is surely found in nature. Indeed, there are no living sexual species in which a small but consistent homosexual contingent has not been recorded. From our closest living relatives chimpanzees and bonobos—which are entirely bisexual—to even invertebrate species such as beetles, scientists have known for a long time that lots of animal species exhibit homosexuality. This observation was one that changed my own mind about homosexuality. I used to believe that homosexuality is unnatural as well, until sometime in 2016 when I observed a small population of sheep that lived close to my church. There was a particular ram that was always trying to copulate with other rams and not the ewes. This struck me at the time, as I had believed that only humans exhibited homosexual behaviour. I did a little reading on the subject, and I realised that lots of other species—lions, ducks, elephants, reptiles, fish, dolphins, and so on—also exhibit this behaviour. So this claim falls flat on its face.

By the way, guess what all of these species lack? Homophobia!

Now we go to the second claim: homosexuals cannot procreate. Usually, those who make this claim go on to say something like, "If everybody became homosexual, then people would stop being born and the human race would go extinct." But no one says everybody has to be homosexual. Only a small contingent of sexual populations (roughly 2–5%) will exhibit homosexual behaviour. This does not in any way threaten the existence of the human race. In fact, it favours it, as I will explain later. 

Also, if homosexuality ceases procreation, then humans would never have evolved. Given that virtually all living sexual species exhibit homosexuality, it is reasonable to infer that past sexual species, including our own ancestors, exhibited it. And if it were true that homosexuality would lead to the extinction of the human race, then there would not be a human race in the first place, since our ancestors would have become extinct long before we evolved. So this extinction argument is false as well.

Furthermore, the proponents of this point make a false assumption that every member of a population is meant to procreate, or will, in fact, do so. In reality, not every member of a population will. Some members of a population may be born infertile—interestingly, I have hardly heard anyone claim this is unnatural—or simply refuse to have kids. Homosexuals can also fall into this category. Moreover, the resources and care that would have been available to the direct offspring of the homosexuals would be available to their kin and other members of the community, thereby ensuring that copies of their own genes present in other members of the population get passed on to the next generation. This is perfectly grounded in and compatible with the gene-centred view of evolution. Therefore, claiming homosexuality is unnatural and ceases procreation is being not just ignorant of science but also imaginatively shallow. The idea that not being able to reproduce is somehow against nature is a non-sequitur because nature does not indicate that every individual organism must and will reproduce.

So, having put these arguments to bed, homophobes cannot hide behind 'biology' for their bigotry. 

But of course, we all know their real bases for their anti-homosexual claims:

1. "Homosexuality is bad because [insert holy book] tells me so": to which I say, "Why should anyone care what [insert holy book] says!?"
2. "I just don’t like homosexuality": to which I say, "Why should anyone care what you personally do or don't like??"

Links:

1. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Nature
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior
3. https://web.archive.org/web/20070929131358/http://www.news-medical.net/?id=20718
4. https://youtu.be/UlQvf7IVxao
5. https://youtu.be/614k_UoFa2U?list=TLPQMTMwNjIwMjC0f8M1BFLSrw