Gay vs. Homosexual Behavior

There was a ten page special in the NY Times Magazine section entitled “Can Animals Be Gay?” I have to say generally speaking, no, I don’t believe they can be gay. Do they sometimes “choose” mates of the same gender? Yes. Do they sometimes engage in same sex mating? You betcha. But isn’t that the same thing as being gay? Absolutely not!

Being gay has nothing to do with who you sleep with, who you have sex with or even who you may mate for life with because none of these activities require that you fall in love with the person you’re engaging in them with. And that is what being gay is about: who you can fall in love with. Not who you can love— because we can all love someone of any gender. But who you can fall head over heels in love with. That determines whether you’re gay, straight or bisexual. If you’re gay, you can only fall in love with someone of the same gender. If you’re bisexual, you can fall in love with any gender. If you’re straight, you only fall in love with someone of the opposite gender.

I realize this is a bit over-simplified since there really aren’t just two genders, but demonstrating that gender is more of a range with male at one end and female at the other and a whole host in between is not the point of this article.

Who you fall in love with is not really a matter of choice. Your souls call out to each other and you fall in love. Now, whether you act on that love is most certainly a matter of choice.

We as humans tend to engage in anthropomorphism when referring to animals. We had a dog once and when we’d take the dog to the kennel if we were going out of town, the dog would act as if she hadn’t seen us for days even if we’d only been gone three minutes to go out to the car and get her food/toys. She acted the same way when we’d pick her up a day later or a week later. She had no concept of time. She was just happy to see us after not having seen us. And yet we tended to feel bad when leaving her at the kennel because, despite knowing that she was getting excellent care and play time with the kennels owners, we worried she’d think we’d left her or abandoned her.

Domesticated animals do learn patterns of behavior. If the only time you put your cat in a carrier is to take them to the vet and the vet gives them a shot each time you take them there, they may not want to get into a carrier. If you shake a box of treats, eventually your cats will associate the sound of the shaking box with a treat and come running when they hear the sound. You can even call out to wild animals when you put out food, they’ll come to recognize that call and when you make it, they’ll come for the food. (We do it with the feral cats we “take care” of.) But these are learned behaviors and they can be unlearned as well simply by changing what is associated with that sound.

While we’d all like to believe that most wild animals “love” their children, truth of the matter is that they protect their offspring out of instinct. Even many domestic animals can have their young removed and they go on as if nothing happened after a few days of adjusting.

Because these animals have no emotions per se (except unconditional love for their owners in the case of some domesticated animals), they can’t make the emotional connection with a mate.  So I don’t believe that these animals can be gay. Of course they can’t really be bisexual or heterosexual either.

There are some animals that appear to have the capacity to feel emotions: elephants, gorillas, orcas and dolphins are among them. I’d still be reluctant to put the label “gay” on these animals because it’s hard to know if they “fall in love” with their mate or if it’s just instinct that drives them to mate (and with animals, seeing as we can’t understand their language, the only “sign” that an animal might be gay is through engaging in homosexual mating.)

Being gay is an emotional trait as opposed to a physical trait. It’s the falling in love that makes someone gay not who they have sex with. And when that’s finally understood, I’d be willing to bet that most straights would have an “Aha!” moment and be completely in favor of getting rid of all the laws that limit gay rights.