As part of a brief explanation of her support for the FMA, a woman named Jeanne wrote:

"In all the centuries ahead of us, societies realized that the intact family of man/woman/offspring were important for preserving the integrity of the state."

So I replied:

I swear, you make the most absurd claims Jeanne. ...

In fact, a myriad of different family organization schemes have existed on this planet over the course of "all of the centuries ahead of us", and most of them have decidedly not centered on one man, one woman, and their offspring. You clearly need to do some reading in the field of anthropology, because you know not whereof you speak! The "nuclear family" is a very recent Western invention and hitherto was certainly not "necessary" for the functioning of many thousands of human societies over the wide span of human history.

At any rate, it is entirely your opinion and belief that a family unit based on a heterosexual couple is the proper building block of a society. Many others do not share your belief and do not care to build their personal lives according to your belief system. In a country based on the protection of individual liberties and equal rights of all before the law, you and those who share your views have no right whatsoever to deny equal treatment and benefits to one segment of society, most especially a productive, contributing, law-abiding segment of people who pay their taxes, serve on juries and PTAs, volunteer, make charitable contributions, sing in church choirs, and wish nothing more than to live in peace like everyone else!!

What can you do but roll your eyes?! (And fight like hell in the political arena, of course!)

Well, I'm beginning a series of posts to respond to a nice long comment left by Steve Skojec. Enjoy!

Steve: The rational argument you are looking for is the argument from nature

Me: Aha, well that's interesting, because, as we all know, if we've looked into it at all, both same-sex sexual contact and (please pay particularly attention to this Steven) same-sex relationships are well documented in the natural world...
[For more information, please consult Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl.
Amazon also recommends these related books:
What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality by Daniel A. Helminiak
Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape by F. B. M. De Waal, et al
Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe by John Boswell
Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson
The Construction of Homosexuality by David F. Greenberg
(Apparently the "Dr. Tatiana" book comes highly recommended—hugely educational and entertaining.)]

Steve: though rarely do people agree on what is "natural" and what is not.

Me: Indeed. But hopefully that won't stop us from attempting a discussion!

Steve: To use an objective measure I stopped by dictionary.com. The most appropriate definition in the context of this discussion was the third one listed for "nature":
Conforming to the usual or ordinary course of nature: a natural death.
And nature? Two possibilities there; I'll list them both:
The forces and processes that produce and control all the phenomena of the material world: the laws of nature.
The processes and functions of the body.

So we see nature as something that adheres to order - there are "laws" of nature. We see that it involves biological processes. We see that for something to be natural, it is seen to follow a certain course. This means that any natural act would be something that is not only biologically proper to the acting being but also follows a course from beginning to end.

Me: Hmmm. OK. I'm not sure if you're arguing this or not, but I want to object to the idea that everything in nature happens "for a reason". It may or may not, but certainly we do not always know or understand the reasons for things. Anyway, I think I agree with this, more or less... I don't know quite what you mean when you say that a "natural act" "follows a course from beginning to end"... What "course" and who has determined this supposed course? We can observe nature and see what happens, but we don't always know why something happens, nor can we be sure we are properly interpreting cause and effect. There is always subjectivity involved. But anyway, let's continue.

Steve: Trees grow toward light because they need it to accomplish photosynthesis, not because they choose to. They are acting toward the natural end of generating food.

Me: Hmmm. OK. I won't be difficult. It would be hard to attribute volition to plants on a purely biological basis. On a spiritual plane I'm not sure everything doesn't have some kind of volition, but that's only speculation and certainly beyond the scope of this "rational" "biological" discussion.

Steve: Animals are more adaptive, and have learned behaviors, and though they act according to nature, they also follow impulses with a degree of volition that plants do not have. Human beings, on the other hand, have complete volition.

Me: I don't agree there. Humans do many things instinctually, using no conscious volition. We do not breathe because we will it so. We do not digest food because we will it so. Adrenaline does not course through our bloodstream in a "fight or flight" situation because we will it so. We are not attracted to certain people and not others because we will it so. Some people do not have a higher predisposition to alcohol abuse or breast cancer because they will it so. Intelligence, balding, metabolism, acne, even death itself, these are biological factors and processes that simply are givens to our existence. We can do what we can do to influence reality to meet our desires, but our ability to do so is virtually always limited.

Steve: Though they act in accordance with the laws of nature that govern them, they have control over their impulses. We can subject our impulses and control our nature according to our intellect and will.

Me: Again, it's all relative. To say that we have more control over our reactions to biological impulses than less complex biological creatures is almost certainly true. But our control is nowhere near absolute. Even when we think we are in control, biological and psychological factors are always influencing us in ways we cannot even begin to comprehend. Why am I tired or hungry or sick or horny or in pain or happy or amused or any number of things when my will would have it otherwise? How often do we will our behavior and how often do we simply follow instinct? I think the latter is much more common than most of us would perhaps like to believe. It's not to say we can't, necessarily, but very often we simply don't. And often that's not particuarly bad or good...it just is.

Steve: As nature goes, we are at the pinnacle, yet we do not have the ability to circumvent it.

Me: I'm not sure "we are at the pinnacle", whatever exactly that means, and I'm not sure what you mean by "we do not have the ability to circumvent it"... To circumvent what?

Steve: Many try to view the homosexual question in overly simplistic terms.

Me: Well, I think that would be more your side of the discussion than mine, but anyway...

Steve: They see certain homosexual behaviors in the animal kingdom, and so try to justify analagous human behavior as "natural".

Me: I just want to clarify that I don't think whether or not something "natural", whatever that may mean, is a particularly important reason to do it or not, as a general rule. I only use evidence of homosexuality in the animal world in response to anti-gay claims that "homosexuality is unnatural". Arguably much of what humans do is "unnatural", but that doesn't in and of itself make it right or wrong.

Steve: This is a foolish course for two reasons. First, because what is "natural" for animals is not always "natural" for humans, and second, because animals act on ungoverned impulses that do not always follow a natural course. Monkeys throw feces. Dogs eat their own vomit. Some animals cannibalize their young. Does this mean that we should imitate this behavior?

Me: If you are being attacked and have some feces handy, perhaps you should throw it! Things like eating vomit and eating (generally dead) offspring have to do with issues of predators and prey, territory, etc. that we don't need to worry about because we live in houses, have cleaning supplies, garbage cans, etc., etc. If we have a stillborn baby or an infant that dies, we cremate or bury it (or if it's early enough in the pregnancy, perhaps it simply goes down the toilet). We have no need to eat it. Perhaps someone could have developed a cultural reason for eating dead infants...maybe someone did at some point, I don't really know...

Steve: In the question of nature, what is truly "natural" is an action that is ordered to the accomplishment of an end that is biologically necessary. This is an important distinction. "Natural" acts always serve biological self-preservation in some direct or indirect sense.

Me: Well, humans (and other animals also) do all sorts of things that aren't particularly tied to self-preservation, some of them arguably good things (like, I don't know, reading novels or baking cakes), so I'm not sure what your point is...

Steve: The most common natural act is eating.

Me: Hmmm. Think I'd have to go with sleeping, or breathing, or some sort of cellular process, but whatever...

Steve: We eat to nourish our bodies so that they can grow and we can continue to live. We are prompted to eat by a sensation, an urge, that tells us "you need food". As humans, we can ignore that urge (unlike animals)

Me: Animals are known to defy instinctual impulses for psychological reasons. If a dog's beloved human dies or goes away, it may starve itself to death out of sadness and loneliness.

Steve: though if we ignore it long enough, we will die. The natural end of eating is nourishment - a necessity for our own preservation.

Me: OK, though do let me point out that all sorts of rules and norms and customs and habits govern human eating patterns that have to do with culture and psychology rather than biology.

Steve: Sex is another appetite that is naturally geared toward self-preservation. The reproductive urge is biologically explainable only as a means by which a species is maintained through offspring.

Me: You are equating sexual activity with reproduction, and I strongly disagree with this equation, particularly with regard to humans, but even non-human animals, particularly primates and highly intelligent mammals, such as dolphins. Even with animals, sex is often as much a function of social processes as biological ones, in terms of who mates with whom and when. Social hierarchies in the animal world have grown out of biological dictates, but sometimes they have a logic of their own that is much more complicated than simply copulation = reproduction = propogation of species...

Now I'm sure we'll get into this later, but I want to say from the get-go that if human genital contact is only "allowed" in order to propogate the species, there are a hell of a lot of people on this planet who are going to have to stop a hell of a lot of sexual behavior(!), and this goes way beyond gays and lesbians. Human sexuality and sexual behavior has never been, nor will it ever be, nor indeed should it be primarily about reproduction or propogating the species (and you don't even argue that, at least not between a married man and a married woman). Genital stimulation, whether it involves one or more persons, is about pleasure. According to me it is beautiful and glorious. Sexual activity between two or more persons is also about connection. But anyway, I'm sure we'll get into all of this later.

Steve: The elements of attraction, courting rituals, sexual pleasure, etc., are all tangental to the purpose of the sexual act. They are means by reproduction is accomplished, not the end in itself.

Me: On a biological level there is, of course, a certain truth to this, but I think it's of quite limited importance when speaking of human beings and more intelligent mammals. Let me put it this way: one of the purposes of heterosexual human coitus is reproduction; however, for much of humanity, much of the time, this purpose is of limited or no importance with regard to motivating or defining sexual activity; analagously, one of the purposes of eating food is not to starve to death; however, for much of humanity, much of the time, this purpose is of limited or no importance with regard to motivating or defining food production and consumption. If you simply didn't want to starve to death, you could avoid it by consuming a live mouse or pulling up some roots from the ground and gobbling them up, but that has absolutely no relation to the ways in which human beings routinely prepare and eat food. Analagously, if there is no heterosexual copulation (well, now we have ways around that, but anyway), and women don't get pregnant and give birth to babies (soon we'll have ways around that too), the human race will die out, but that has absolutely no relation to the ways in which human beings routinely engage in sexual activity.

OK, well, that's where I'm stopping today, but I look forward to the continuation of this process.