Natural Law, Natural Sex, Natural Families.

A favourite argument used by the religious right against homoerotic relationships, and by the Vatican theologians against any form of sexual expression outside of marriage and not open to making babies, is that such sexual activities are "against nature", and that the "purpose" of sex is procreation. Well, the people making these claims have never considered the actual evidence from, well, you know - "Nature" itself, which shows the exact opposite.  In a famous exchange, Anita Bryant once remarked that the things that homosexuals do were so disgusting that "even barnyard animals wouldn't do it." When it was pointed out to her that actually, barnyard and other animals do "do it",  as is well known to farmers, she simply replied, "Well that still don't make it right". No, and it don't make it wrong, either.  On sexual ethics, "Nature" is morally neutral.

"Anita Bryant, Reality Denier"

Animals Use Sex Toys, Too

The more I explore the nature of sexuality in the animal world, the more amazed I am at the extraordinary number of ways in which animals show all the diversity of human sexuality, and more. Male dolphins and whales have an extra orifice to penetrate (their partners' blowholes); some primate male couples can indulge in "penis fencing" while hanging from a tree branch (I bet you've never tried that); and female spotted hyenas have a pseudo- phallus that they can (and do) use for penetration. More familiar activities are the usual mounting and penetration, either vaginal or anal, usually from the rear but sometimes from the front, or even the side; masturbation, using hands if they have them, but also flippers or just the ground; oral sex - forms of both fellatio and cunnilingus are known; and just plain cuddling and caressing.

Squirrel Threesome

Relationships are equally diverse, including long term pair bonds, in both between-sex and same-sex couples, one-off copulation, strictly monogamous and non-monogamous relationships, polygamy, polyandry and group orgies.

In the beginning: The Myth of the Modern Family

"Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality" is a new book I am putting directly onto my reading list, based on this fascinating review by Eeric Michael Johnson, a scholar who writes on issues of science, politics, and history at The Primate Diaries. So much hot air in the debates over marriage equality and about Vatican doctrine is wasted over assumptions over "natural law" and "traditional" marriage, that we do not pay enough attention to what truly is natural or traditional.

For the husband and wife team Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá in their new book Sex At Dawn, this example is one of many that suggests the human species did not evolve in monogamous, nuclear families but rather in small, intimate groups where “most mature individuals would have had several ongoing sexual relationships at any given time.” We are the descendants of these multimale-multifemale mating groups and, even though we’ve constructed a radically different society from our hunter-gatherer forebears, the behavioral and psychological traits our species evolved in the distant past still manifest themselves today. Ryan, a psychologist, and Jethá, a psychiatrist, argue that understanding human sexual evolution this way helps to explain our species’ unique creativity inside (as well as outside) the marriage bed.