I Told You Animals Can Be Gay, Too...

Nature vs. Nurture: Gay Animals

Last summer during a West Virginia camping trip, I brought up the topic of gay animals. At the time, my fellow gay hikers looked at me like I was the forest idiot for even suggesting that the two squirrels I saw playing together might be gay. They enthusiastically ganged up on me. "Animals aren't gay!" they protested in sequence. Then the professional attacks came, "I thought you were supposed to be like the king gay or something, with your column and all. Now you've gone too far."

Outnumbered, I scurried for sources, but couldn't remember any. All I recalled was some TV special I saw, an urban legend that farmers killed their queer non-mating animals, the gay penguins at the Central Park Zoo and the man in New York that sold gay dogs. Of course, the specifics escaped me when I needed them most. "King gay?" Gay friends can be so facetious!

Well, just over a year after my reputation was tarnished, Geir Soeli, the project leader of the exhibition entitled "Against Nature" at the Oslo Natural History Museum tells Reuters: "Homosexuality has been observed for more than 1,500 animal species, and is well documented for 500 of them."

Soeli's exhibition about homosexuality and animals shows that homosexuality can't be "unnatural." A statement in the exhibition says, "We may have opinions on a lot of things, but one thing is clear -- homosexuality is found throughout the animal kingdom, it is not against nature."

Soeli also cites Greek philosopher Aristotle's observations of gay hyenas 2,300 years ago and bisexual Bonobos, a type of chimpanzee.

Thank you, Geir Soeli! Can I have my crown now, fellas?