Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiConfirmed: God is Slightly Gay
Just ask the animals. As soon as they stop having all that homosexual sex
I am sitting here right now smiling just a little, fondly recalling that famously controversial children's book, the one about the gay penguins.
Remember? That positively adorable pair of them, at the Central Park Zoo, who had adopted an abandoned egg and then hatched it themselves and were raising the chick together as a couple, even though the chick was clearly not theirs -- though of course how penguins can actually tell whose kid is whose is still a question. Never mind that now.
The best part: the story was absolutely true. The book, "And Tango Makes Three," was beautiful and sweet and touching in all the right ways -- except, of course, for the fact that it was also totally evil.
For indeed, the penguins in question, named Roy and Silo, were both males. This meant they were clearly in some sort of ungodly, aberrant homosexual relationship, mocking natural laws and defying God's will that all creatures only cohabitate with the opposite sex and buy microfiber sofas from Pottery Barn and eat their meals in silent resentment and never have sex.
Worst of all, the book depicted this relationship, this "family," as perfectly OK, as no big deal, as even (shudder) normal. After all, Roy and Silo didn't seem to give much of a damn. Tango sure seemed happy, what with not being left for dead and all. As of this writing, the Central Park Zoo has yet to be swallowed into a gaping maw of sinful doom. Any minute now, I suppose.
I am right now amused at this because it turns out Roy and Silo were not really so much of an anomaly at all. Nor were they some sort of unholy freakshow, an immoral mistake in the eyes of a wrathful hetero God. Far from it. Turns out they were, in fact, far more the norm than many humans, even to this day, want to let on.
Behold, the ongoing, increasingly startling research: homosexual and bisexual behavior, it turns out, is rampant in the animal kingdom. And by rampant, I mean proving to be damn near universal, commonplace across all species everywhere, existing for myriad reasons ranging from pure survival and procreative influence, right on over to pure pleasure, co-parenting, giddy screeching multiple monkey orgasm, even love, and a few dozen other potential explanations science hasn't quite figured out yet. Imagine.
Are you thinking, why sure, everyone knows about those sex-crazed dolphins and those superslut bonobo monkeys and the few other godless creatures like them, the sea turtles and the weird sheep and such, creatures who obviously haven't read Leviticus. But that's about it, right? Most animals are devoutly hetero and straight and damn happy about it, right?
Wrong.
New research is revealing so many creatures and species that exhibit homosexual/bisexual behavior of some kind, scientists are now saying there are actually very few, if any, species in existence that don't exhibit it in some way. It's everywhere: Bison. Giraffes. Ducks. Hyenas. Lions and lambs, lizards and dragonflies, polecats and elephants. Hetero sex. Anal sex. Partner swapping. The works.
Let's flip that around. Here's the shocking new truism: In the wilds of nature, to not have some level of homosexual/bisexual behavior in a given species is turning out to be the exception, not the rule. Would you like to read that statement again? Aloud? Through a megaphone? To the Mormon and Catholic churches? And the rest of them, as well? Repeatedly?
Would you like to inform them that such behavior is definitely not, as so many hard-line Christian literalists want to believe, some sort of poison that snuck into God's perfect cake mix, nor is it all due to some sort of toxic chemical that leeched into the animal's water supply, suddenly causing all creatures to occasionally feel the urge wear glitter and listen to techno and work on their abs?
And so we extend the idea just a little bit. Because if homosexual/bisexual behavior is universal and by design, if gender mutability is actually deeply woven into the very fabric of nature itself, and if you understand that nature is merely another word for God, well, you can only surmise that God is, to put it mildly, much more than just a little bit gay. I mean, obviously.
But let's be fair. That's not exactly true. God is not really gay, per se. God is more... pansexual. Omnisexual. Gender neutral. Gender indeterminate. It would appear that God, this all-knowing and all-creating and all-seeing divine energy that infuses and empowers all things at all times everywhere, does not give a flying leather whip about gender.
Or rather, She very much does, but not in the simpleminded, hetero-only way 2,000 years of confused religious dogma would have us all believe.
God's motto: Look, life is a wicked inscrutable orgy of love and compassion and survival instinct, shot through with pain and longing and death and suffering and far, far too many arguments about who did or did not pay the goddamn mortgage.
Life on Earth is messy and bloody and constantly evolving and transmuting and guess what? So is sexuality, and love, and connection, and what it means to exist. And if you uptight, hairless bipeds don't soon acknowledge this in a very profound way, well, it ain't the damn penguins who will suffer for it. You feel me?
This, then, is what science appears to be trying to tell us, has been telling us, over and over again: Nature abides no narrow, simplistic interpretation of her ways. Nature will defy your childish fears and laughable behavioral laws at nearly every turn. God does not do shrill homophobia.
Of course, until very recently, science was also beaten with the stick of right-wing fear for many, many years, told to keep quiet about those damnable facts, or else. Homosexuality is a lifestyle! A choice! And you can be lured into it! Seduced by the evil rainbow! Just like those poor penguins! Right.
Let us be perfectly clear. Not every individual animal necessarily displays homosexual traits. But in every sexually active species on the planet, at least some of them do, for all sorts of reasons, and it's common and obvious and as normal as a warm spring rain falling on a pod of giddy bottlenose dolphins having group sex off the coast of Fiji.
And either humankind is part of nature and the wanton animal kingdom, a full participant in the messy inexplicable glories of the flesh and spirit and gender play, or we are the aberrant mistake, the ones who are lagging far behind the rest of the kingdom, sad and lost in the eyes of a very, very fluid and increasingly disappointed God.
58 Comments so far
Show AllMaybe religion is a waste of humanity.
It's all about stifling your natural desires and instincts in order to "improve" on nature. As if that's possible for a creature that is less than nature itself to create something "better."
Bigamy should not be illegal, having to put up with more than one woman is it's own punishment!
Mark is trying to legitimate gay truths via stretched analogies w/ the animal kingdom.
Gay truths don't need to be legitimated in my humble opinion. And this attempt to do so is weak.
Signed, a Morford, Chronicle, SF fan. And lover of Gays, their rights, their beauty.
We know that these two male penguins shared the job of incubating and egg, but calling them 'gay' is a bit of a stretch. Do we know whether they actually copulated or attempted copulation? In any case, possible homosexual tendencies in the animal kingdom aren't a very good justification our own human behavior. Do we usually look to the animal kingdom for guidance in human affairs?
Speculating about penguin sex? Get a life, kid.
"In any case, possible homosexual tendencies in the animal kingdom aren't a very good justification our own human behavior. Do we usually look to the animal kingdom for guidance in human affairs?"
In that case, the homophobes like you should then stop claiming that being LGBT is "unnatural" and "against natural laws".
I believe Skyler is correct: it was Weiner's "The Beak of the Finch".
Oh, and by the way, one more horror: MASTURBATION!
I have a dim recollection of reading references to apes and dolphins masturbating. Does anyone know something about this? Masturbation implies an awareness of specifically sexual pleasure, which would seem to require a minimum level of cognitive development. Maybe in the future the practice of masturbation will be used as a marker on a scale of cognition or awareness. And wouldn't that make the Abahamic arbiters of morality froth at the mouth!
Actually, I just remembered that Gerald Durrell, in one of his animal-collecting-adventure books, recounts the amusing story of the time a missionary couple came to visit his collection. The woman took a close look at an ape and discovered that he was fellating himself. His guests toured the rest of the collection very quickly, Durrell recalls, and "her face was frozen in an expression that said that they might be God's creatures but she wished He would do something about their habits." (I quote from memory.)
Yes, animals masturbate. Not just apes and dolphins either. Pretty much all the stuff humans do, animals also do.
Despite what some people think, for example the religious right, animals do not just have sex to procreate.
There this hilarous video somehwere on the web. Some person with an English accent is taliking about something or another while he sits on a grassy knoll.
In the background is a kangaroo stroking itself off and he is wondering why all the laughter as he speaks seriously on some topic or another.
Its rich.
A kangaROO!!
But its Un natural dont you know. They were never intended to do that! It a transgression in the eyes of god!!
As is listening to Rock and roll...or Jazz.
"Some person with an English accent is taliking about something or another while he sits on a grassy knoll."
I bet that was David Attenborough. He does a lot of programs of that kind (though the version GwNorth describes would probably have been considered an out-take and re-shot rather than included in the program of course.)
Jesus is crying for you Mark.
The religious bigots and the homophobes would no doubt blame the gays for animals becoming homosexual.
Isn't it the male penguins who carry the eggs on their feet and keep them cozy under their fur, or whatever that is? I bet the females told them, "Hey! You try layin' one of those big eggs if you think it's so easy. So shut up and walk your kid already!"
I've always wondered why gays are so determined to have their relationship defined as "marriage." I just don't think it should have any relevance to civil society.
Marriage doesn't have to be tied to simply one man, one woman. Same sex advocates are not pushing to redefine marriage to their own liking at the expense of leaving out the traditional marriages. They're simply trying to expand on the definition of the word "marriage" by not limiting it to one of each sex but to also include a couple where both partners are of the same sex. See my post on this thread for clarification.
I don't understand why a relationship needs to be recognized by the government. Why not just treat people as individuals? If people want their bond recognized by the church, let it define marriage.
Because there are often legal, and economic, benefits to having a relationship recognised by a government, specifically as marriage.
You might argue that should not be the case. If so, then, straight relationships also should not be recognised by a government.
Exactly. Unmarried straight couples are being discriminated against. I'd like to know more about these "benefits."
In this crazy world, sometimes even doing something slightly different as a man can get him called "gay" even when he's straight. The only thing that I can think of that would have people mistake me as "gay" is wearing tights under my shorts or kilt since it would be visible. Thankfully, there seems to be some tolerance showing for men wearing tights, athletic or otherwise. The trick is to look at it from a conservative tolerance perspective and I'm not talking politically conservative. Likewise, the same could be said for same sex couples. Here's what I mean. I wear tights often because it gives me comfort and I have discovered health benefits to wearing legwear just like women. My wife and I wear them when we jog in the winter outside. Therefore, this deserves to be a unisex garment. Likewise, one man loves another man or one woman loves another woman. It's not being the opposite sex that generates love alone. Love comes from what one likes and feels comfortable about from that partner of theirs. Gender is just one factor but does not deserve to be the deciding requirement to dictate who can marry whom. If you feel that being with this partner for the rest of your life will keep you happy and your health in order regardless of your partner being the same sex, then go for it. You have nothing to lose. It's your choice and responsibility, not the government's. At least that's what I would say even if I were a moderated conservative.
For anyone who doubts the complete idiocy of Mark Morford, please read this:
"The Age of Obama has brought both a terrific upswelling of general positivism and a concomitant grand lightening up/toning down of outrageous verbiage and ranting extremism among the hotheaded-dictator set, and with it the strangest thing of all: an apparent global decline in overt, easily identifiable flameballs of tangible evil. "
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/06/12/notes061209.DTL
and this:
"Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul. "
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL
I have to admit that Morford's cutting-edge, New Age smarminess about Obama surprised and disappointed me. At first I assumed he was being satirical.
I tolerated Morford's excessive sex-paraphernalia references (not that there's anything wrong with it!) and technogeek obsession because he occasionally published fine political screeds with a true Gonzo edge.
But when Morford began touting Obama as some Gnostic Lord of the Spiritual Light, or Jedi Warrior or whatever, I cringed. I stopped reading him regularly, in fact, although I haven't written him off completely.
Matt Taibbi similarly became infatuated with Obama, which for me was Strike Two because of his reactionary 9/11 stance. But Taibbi's eyes seem to be re-opening.
· Yr Obd't Servant
I enjoy an occasional Morford article de vez en cuando. There is nothing Gonzo about Morford. Sorry, but there really isn't.
One BIG problem--This item isn't "idiotic"--it publicly states a truth too long covered-up. A truth you may not like, but a truth nonetheless.
Indeed. From the fact that X once said something dumb about topic Z it hardly follows that what X is now saying on this topic is dumb. To forget this is to be guilty of the ad hominen fallacy.
Do you mean like Dick Cheney's support of gay marriage? Maybe CD should invite him to be a guest writer.
BTW did I ever claim this article was idiotic? Or just the author?
Actually, Cheney's "support" is the typical two faced want it both ways type of "support". In other words, if you read clearly what he says, he doesn't (actively) oppose it, but he doesn't actively support it either.
Also, his daughter is lesbian.
Can you prove that his daughter is a lesbian?
Yes, it's a fact--Homosexuality is NATURAL. The fact's been known for far more than a decade. How the natural mechanism works in the womb is well detailed in layman's terms in the book "Our Stolen Future," which also exposes how our "chemical culture" acts to increase the natural incidence of homosexuality. The destructive aspects of our Chemical Culture was first announced in the book "Silent Spring" and is alarmingly updated by "Our Stolen Future," which unlike Silent Spring was ignored by the Propaganda and Indoctrination System in hopes the public wouldn't read the essential information the book contains. Silent Spring is now a member of the Literary Cannon, while I lobbied hard for professors to add Our Stolen Future to their required reading lists to no avail. I hope this comment causes at least one person to become better informed; then, perhaps, they will inform friends and family.
Now, just HOLD ON one fat minute, everybody!
The abundance of perverted deviant sex in the Animal Kingdom doesn't prove a THING!
After all, they're only ANIMALS! They don't KNOW any better! That's why The Creator of the Universe gave us DOMINION over them!
Next you'll be claiming that NAKEDNESS is natural because animals don't wear clothes. And THAT's a slipperly slope into the Pit of Damnation, where doomed souls are Objectively Pro-Nipple!
Dontcha SEE?
· Yr Obd't Servant
If you read Genesis carefully, you will see that the visible sign of Adam's (and Eve's) "sin" was that they CLOTHED themselves, not the opposite.
According to the Genesis account, while they were sufficiently comfortable with their own bodies to remain naked, they were considered innocent and sinless.
This might be just another of those bits of Bible teaching that the religious right prefers to ignore, but many of the so-called "hippies" and "drop-outs" of the 1960s and since are also actually closer to the original state of innocence (as described in Genesis chapter one) than are most church members I have ever met.
You think this is bad? It gets worse: INCEST! BESTIALITY!
It turns out that animals occasionally mate with very closely related animals, and occasionally mate with animals of a different (but very closely related) species. If a couple percent of matings are "incestuous", useful genes are concentrated without too much concentration of harmful ones. The occasional over-the-fence liaison produces the occasional fertile hybrid, which bring back into a species some of the genes that it lost access to when it diverged from other species.
I learned this from a book about research on evolution in action among the finches living on Daphne Island in the Galapagos. The researchers exhaustively documented the feeding and mating of the finches ("exhaustively" is a euphemism for the kind of behaviour that in any other context would be called anal-retentive monomania), crunched the numbers, and precisely verified the equations derived from the theory of evolution.
Later on I'll dig up the reference for that book at the local public library.
Incest!? - No! That's a sin!
It's got to be in the bible!
Just like Adam & Eve before they had neighbors......
Hi Angry Kraut,
I believe the book to which you're referring is The Beak of The Finch, by Jonathan Weiner. Read it years ago.
one more thing...I truly believe that, while our societal attitudes toward sex are frequently, like those around pot, snickered at, due to their hypocriticality, both of these issues are actually enormous in diagnosing why we are so dysfunctional as a species...if we stopped snickering and prosecuting, and simply accepted the fact that sexual pleasure, like marijuana, is wonderful, and to be shared often by consenting adults, we might find much of the underlying anxiety permeating our consumerism is abated...
the planet might thank us for getting high and fucking around more, and trashing the place less...
Sex is fine, pot has never been my cup of tea...
If you'd gotten high prior to sex, I'm sure it'd be more than "fine". I'm sure all 3 of the people you slept would agree. Seriously? Who describes sex as "fine"?
Well, this isn't Penthouse forum, so I'm not going to write long lurid pieces about my sexual experiences.
Pot makes all my nerve endings feel like they are vibrating in unison at about 20 Hz, and causes alarming heart palpitations. Then I spend the rest of the evening staring at the ceiling. Not everyone finds pot intoxication to be a pleasant sensation. But to each his own....
It typically works better when you smoke it rather than making it into a tea . . . : )
A-friggin-MEN, Dubet!
Well, you've certainly sold ME!
· Yr Obd't Servant
I believe humans are meant to engage in a much greater amount of social sex...the homosexual angle succeeds as a topic for discussion because it still doesn't tackle the underlying big one...monogamy...
what if trying to maintain any sexual life, hetero or homo, that allows for but a single, lifelong partner, with the only alternative guilt, ostracization and failure, is unnatural? my instincts are constantly appraising potential mates, and enjoying doing so...sex for the sake of pleasure can be very successful, and motivate one to maintain health and sexuality...the orgasmic experience can be incredibly uplifting and spiritual, and may be responsive to new lovers and experiences where the familiar hampers...why do we make ourselves stop?
dubet, that sounds typically male. Biologically for breeding success a male mammal seeks to have as many partners as possible since his investment in the process is minimal. The female with a much more significant investment seeks a long term pair bond for rearing support. I understand that females find wealthy men more attractive than poor men with similar physical attributes.
Your argument assumes that females do not enjoy sex, or do not enjoy sex as much as males, or place far less priority on sex as males.
But, even if we accept those assumptions, why are you so certain that they are biological, and not environmental / cultural? Given a society where women dominate it socially, intellectually, financially, culturally, your assumptions might be reversed: in such a society, it might be men that seek a long term pair bond for security.
"I understand that females find wealthy men more attractive than poor men with similar physical attributes."
Do males not find wealthy women more attractive than poor women with similar physical attributes?
The important angle is as was just said that for any female a child is a "much more significant investment so she seeks a long term pair bond for rearing support"
During one lifetime, a man could (at least in theory) physically father some tens of thousands of offspring, but the length of the incubation period limits women to a small fraction of that number of offspring.
In evolutionary terms, it is not difficult to see why a woman's best chance of successfully passing on her genes is always to pursuade one or more other individuals (typically the father) to support her in raising her children as a long term commitment, and to avoid offering any excuse for him not to do so, so long term monogamy is in very much in her interest.
The man on the other hand has the capacity to to "back both horses". In evolutionary terms he has the same incentive as the woman to provide his children with the best possible conditions and therefore has a motivation to "support his family", but this is not necessarily incompatible with impregnating other females if any opportunity to do so should occur. His wish to "support his own family" will prevent him from offering support to the offspring of such casual encounters so their chances of survival will be that much less, but given that some will survive anyway he will have passed on theat many more of his genes.
I believe that that explains why women in usually much more instinctively committed to the idea of a one-to-one relationship in its purest form, while it is much more usual for a man to be torn between supporting the family he lives with on the one hand and "fooling around" on the other. (It explains the difference of motivation, but note that in saying that I am NOT intending to make any comment about what may be morally right or wrong.)
See Biological Exhuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl for a 750 page encyclopedic view of same gender sexual behaviors, well footnoted for the skeptical. The description of bowhead whales is an interesting example: "Intensive sexual encounters between male Bowhead whales takes place in shallow waters, involving three to six males at a time. Amid much splashing and churning of water, the males roll over each other with erect (unsheathed) penises, caress one another, slap the surface of the water with their tails or flippers, chase each other, and perform tail lofts, in which the tail is lifted high above the water while the whale sinks vertically down. Generally there is one central whale that the others are trying to copulate with, although this whale often rolls belly up in the water, perhaps attempting to avoid their advances (similar to the behavior of females during heterosexual mating activity). Nevertheless, a male Bowhead sometimes inserts hie penis into the genital slit of another male. Sessions of homosexual activity can last for 40 minutes or more, during which males often produce loud and complex vocalizations that resemble roars, screams, or trumpetings." So do the homo-haters want to exterminate or punish these brainy creatures and all the others so as to "purify" earth for their vengeful, monster God? Or in their convoluted theology do these "lesser" creatures get a pass? It actually could be quite interesting to confront some of the public homophobes like Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, Rick Warren with the documented evidence of widespread same gender sexuality in nature and see what their response would be.
The two largest state universities here adopted totem animals, the ram and the buffalo, which are among the most well documented mammals engaging in homosexual behaviors with the males frequently achieving penetrative intercourse. If the alumni and sports coaches and teams knew would they demand a change of critter? Another group it would be interesting to see face the evidence.
Was it those 2 gay penguins that laid the egg? Just curious...
No! This article and the attendant commentary are clearly on the wrong track! In reality, the evidence is only pointing to a heretofor unrecognized fact; that some animals are also sinners against the natural order of things (by natural, I am referring to the nature the good lord intended, of course!). No doubt the sinning animals will be dragged to their respective hells in good order.
Since the egg is innocent in this matter, it probably can be saved unless it is corrupted beyond redemption.
What a great article! Isn't love good no matter where and how you get it? Isn't it nice to know that an orphaned animal may be adopted at all? Does it matter if it's by a gay or straight couple?
We'd be so much better off if we stopped sweating the small stuff and started worrying about the big stuff: like is the human race even going to survive this century?
Accompanying the pioneers on their trek across the mountains, prairies, and deserts was a reprint of a medieval bestiary purporting to describe the unknown creatures that might be encountered on the expedition. It also contained sage advice regarding "inversion," that the prediliction was "unnatural" because only rabbits and hyenas do it: unnatural except for these examples from the natural world.
You could drive a planet, in fact a whole universe, through the blind spot of God-fearing people.
"giddy screeching multiple monkey orgasm" - Oh Shit! Sorry, no time to write comments, must check bedroom for hidden cameras/ microphones...
Jesus himself was gay. He never made love to a woman, never married, had long hair and wore a dress. He was also Jewish and a commie, mind you, with that business of multiplying bread and fish, etc.
...and when he called for his apostles, he always used finger quotes, as in "hey, I really would like to meet with my "apostles" now..." wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
CQ from Maine:
I wonder about this: Since homosexuality seems to be ubiquitous in nature in general and in human nature in particular, and since it does not (ordinarily and in so far as we know) naturally reproduce itself (in the downright way) does it bestow an evolutionary advantage on the human species? Or is it a harmless biproduct of the spread of genetic male and female traits across the gendered spectrum so that some males are very masculine and some females very feminine while others may range from the very masculine female to the very feminine male--and even within those ranges the sexual preference may be as wide or wider--as in the case of the bisexual male who is sexually attracted to the very masculine male and the very feminine male and the female (who also has a masculine feminine range)?
It seems to me that homosexuality must be either helpful or harmless in evolutionary terms. If it in anyway weakened the species it would have been selected out long ago. That it has been more recently discovered to be rather general in nature it seems as if it must be a positive trait. What remains is to figure out why. Does it take the statistical edge off male aggression--rendering it less murderously and violently inclined (so we didn't kill ALL the women in the tribe and therefore survived whereas the Neanderthals didn't have the trait that allowed the Homo Sapiens to survive and thrive)? Or does it effectively spread and mix masculine and feminine traits that encourage and allow other kinds of development including art, science and commerce? Or is it something else?
Perhaps it is a form of natural population control. And traits don't have to be necessarily advantageous -- we all have plenty of traits that don't necessarily serve us that well. Evolution isn't really about survival of the fittest, it is more about survival of the good enough.
CQ, as far as I know there are no definitive answers to your speculations. However from a genetic point of view homosexuality is what would be called maladaptive, since those individuals either don't reproduce or have a much reduced rate of reproduction.
Since all the evidence indicates sexual preference is biological and not cultural then the loss, through lack of reproduction, of the particular types of genetic elements contributing to this sexual preference has to be balanced by increased reproduction of individuals carrying these particular elements but not expressing the same sex sexual preference. If this were not the case then this sexual orientation would have gradually declined over the ages, which is clearly not the case.
Such increased reproductive success is difficult to ascertain in modern populations, where family size tends to be culturally rather than biologically limited.
I often tell my friends that modern homosexualism is culturally adaptive because it keeps sex sexy. It is the gays who create the trends that characterize the image of sexual desire as it changes from decade to decade in modern civilization.
In ancient civilization, homosexualism was culturally adaptive because it sustained the buddy system in ancient militaries, and because it served the purposes that scholarship programs are supposed to serve, bringing the offspring of the less privileged into the forefront of education and politics.
A fundamental problem with your questions is you need to define "masculine" and "feminine". And you need to define your terms scientifically, not culturally, not religiously.
What are "masculine" traits? What are "feminine" traits? How does "masculine" aggression differ from "feminine" aggression? Is art, or science, or commerce "masculine" or "feminine"?
Furthermore, you need to distinguish sexuality and sexual identity.
This is the fundamental problem with a manichean view of sexuality and sexual identity. All the "definitions" are cultural.
Once again today,an excellent post rfloh! More people should read/pursue biological anthropology. Such a waste of human brain power in small thinking.
"Most animals are devoutly hetero and straight and damn happy about it, right?"
Even without the next paragraph, without the rest of the article, we could stop right there and ask the churches and the homophobes if being a minority gave everyone else the right to persecute, marginalize, demonize or ostracize the creatures in that minority. Even if the bonobos and the dolphins were the only ones, are they not created by God too?
But the rest of the article is great anyway.