Homosexuality is quite common in the animal kingdom, especially among herding animals. Many animals solve conflicts by practicing same gender sex.

The Norwegian Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo is hosting the first exhibition that focuses on homosexuality in the animal kingdom.

“One fundamental premise in social debates has been that homosexuality is unnatural. This premise is wrong. Homosexuality is both common and highly essential in the lives of a number of species,” explains Petter Boeckman, who is the academic advisor for the “Against Nature‘s Order?” exhibition.

The most well-known homosexual animal is the dwarf chimpanzee, one of humanity’s closes relatives. The entire species is bisexual. Sex plays an conspicuous role in all their activities and takes the focus away from violence, which is the most typical method of solving conflicts among primates and many other animals.

“Sex among dwarf chimpanzees is in fact the business of the whole family, and the cute little ones often lend a helping hand when they engage in oral sex with each other.”

Lions are also homosexual. Male lions often band together with their brothers to lead the pride. To ensure loyalty, they strengthen the bonds by often having sex with each other.

Homosexuality is also quite common among dolphins and killer whales. The pairing of males and females is fleeting, while between males, a pair can stay together for years. Homosexual sex between different species is not unusual either. Meetings between different dolphin species can be quite violent, but the tension is often broken by a “sex orgy”.

Homosexuality is a social phenomenon and is most widespread among animals with a complex herd life.

Among the apes it is the females that create the continuity within the group. The social network is maintained not only by sharing food and the child rearing, but also by having sex. Among many of the female apes the sex organs swell up. So they rub their abdomens against each other,” explains Petter Bockman and points out that animals have sex because they have the desire to, just like we humans.

Homosexual behaviour has been observed in 1,500 animal species.

“We’re talking about everything from mammals to crabs and worms. The actual number is of course much higher. Among some animals homosexual behaviour is rare, some having sex with the same gender only a part of their life, while other animals, such as the dwarf chimpanzee, homosexuality is practiced throughout their lives.”

Animals that live a completely homosexual life can also be found. This occurs especially among birds that will pair with one partner for life, which is the case with geese and ducks. Four to five percent of the couples are homosexual. Single females will lay eggs in a homosexual pair’s nest. It has been observced that the homosexual couple are often better at raising the young than heterosexual couples.

When you see a colony of black-headed gulls, you can be sure that almost every tenth pair is lesbian. The females have no problems with being impregnated, although, according to Petter Boeckman they cannot be defined as bisexual.

“If a female has sex with a male one time, but thousands of times with another female, is she bisexual or homosexual? This is the same way to have children is not unknown among homosexual people.”

via 1,500 animal species practice homosexuality.

With the anti-abortion movements’ help, everyone else in the country may get a chance to weaken the Christian right’s power for a long, long time.

Oklahoma is about to be the first state where the “personhood amendment” is going to pass, setting the stage for the law to go to the Supreme Court. The right is counting on a Roberts Supreme Court, along with a 5 person Conservative majority, to usher in the overturning of Roe V. Wade. But before that happens, America will get to decide whether we’re going to be governed by the Christian Bible or basic human rights.

This is the leading edge of a slippery slope back to the 1950′s America for which old white men and Rick Santorum are nostalgic. The Oklahoma personhood bill declares life begins at conception and provides embryos and fetuses with “all the rights, privileges, and immunities” of other citizens. Anything anyone does to interfere with that – causing the death of the “person” – would constitute murder. And there are a myriad of other legal ramifications:

The Senate approved the bill which some say is an attempt to outlaw or restrict abortion rights but it also has unintended consequences, according to the mother of 5-year-old Gavin Gayanich.

“We did several years of fertility treatment to get him. I feel like I won the lottery every day. I wake up every morning and this is what I have because of in vitro fertilization and this bill will prevent us from getting another child,” Julie Gayanich said.

Representative Mike Reynolds said Oklahomans are looking for clarity on this issue.

“You couldn’t change the language to say that life begins at conception except in the case of rape. That doesn’t make any sense,” Reynolds said.

via Personhood Amendment Passes In Oklahoma Senate – News9.com – Oklahoma City, OK 

There are two bills in Oklahoma: the one that passed the Senate on a vote of 34-8, and the one that the House has not yet passed. The House bill, in addition to doing everything the Senate bill does, bans birth control choices like Plan B and fertility procedures such as in vitro fertilization that may result in the destruction of fertilized eggs (think of Octomom choosing not to have all 8 fertilized embryos transferred to her uterus). Additionally, it allows NO exception in cases of rape or incest. In Oklahoma, if your father, uncle or brother rapes you, or you are a coed at Oral Roberts University who is the victim of a date rape, the House bill requires that you bear the fruit of that attack for nine months until it is born. That means through morning sickness, prenatal check-ups, the first visible baby bump and the inquiries of friends and neighbors and family members . . . I am so sorry.

And it’s not just Oklahoma. Personhood bills are currently working their way through the legislatures of Iowa, North Dakota, Montana, and Texas.

It’s not about being pro-life. There can be an honest disagreement about defining the moment or event when life begins. These bills are not restricted to defining personhood as beginning at conception instead of at birth. It’s about women’s rights to govern the sanctity of your own bodies – basic human rights. This may be the most hypocritical issue of the Right: one of the main tenets of the GOP is keeping government out of our lives. Yet when it comes to reproductive rights they want to be right in the bedroom. (Now would be a good time to read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.)

If this were about preventing abortion, Rick Santorum, California Rep. Darrell Issa, all the Republican presidential candidates and the nine clerics – all men, one for each month of pregnancy – who testified about how against their principles it is to require them to provide contraception – these people would be the foremost advocates of contraception and sex education, because those two things prevent pregnancy. But they oppose contraception and sex education. These men (and, oddly, some women) are not content to forbid abortion: they also will forbid the best ways for sexually active women to prevent abortion: contraception and sex education. If you do have sex – even if it is against your will – they want you to take your chances and bear the consequences. What?? The hell??

As an aside, there is another common way for sexually active people to avoid unwanted pregnancy and consequent abortions: gay sex. I don’t think I have to explain the right’s position on gay sex. But someone should remind the presidential candidates and clerics that sex between men, and sex between women, is entirely abortion-free (assisted reproductive technologies excepted).

I think we can count on the right not to be able to paint themselves out of this corner. Rick Santorum is currently leading in the polls, and that’s a good thing. Using the Christian Bible to govern our country may resonate with the GOP base, but it’s very likely to turn off everyone else. Even Mitt Romney the Waffle King can’t afford to lose the Christian vote. If GOP leaders come to their senses, they’ll tell the personhood movement to pipe down but be assured that the GOP will take care of them. How many pro-lifers (especially women, who are overwhelmingly saddled with the responsibility of birth control) will think going back to the rhythm method is a great idea? In the privacy of the voting booth, even Mississipi, the state with the 6th largest percentage of self-identified Christians, at 81% according to a recent Gallup poll, resoundingly rejected the personhood law.

It will take a fight, and if progressives and women’s rights supporters can get the word out, we can finally have the basic human rights argument that this country needs to have: the Christian Bible or the Constitution. With which will the political center of the country stand?

If we let the GOP hang themselves, I’m betting – and hoping – this is the issue they’ll do it with. And that just may break the Christian right’s stranglehold on our country for a long time to come.

Let us pray.

By Jack Jamison and John McAndrew, uncommontary.com.

Related articles

• New Virginia Personhood Laws Outlaw Birth Control – and Oh, Yeah – Can Penetrate Women Without Their Consent (uncommontary.com)
• Battle Over Personhood: Is There A “War” Brewing? (erasetheneed.wordpress.com)

www.spreadingsantorum.com

With the religious right and the Tea Party in firm control of the primary process, the GOP has gone down the rabbit hole. The puppeteers of the party made their bed. Paul Krugman makes the argument that now they have to lie in it, and it will be a long time before they come back.

Start with Rick Santorum, who, according to Public Policy Polling, is the clear current favorite among usual Republican primary voters, running 15 points ahead of Mr. Romney. Anyone with an Internet connection is aware that Mr. Santorum is best known for 2003 remarks about homosexuality, incest and bestiality. But his strangeness runs deeper than that.

For example, last year Mr. Santorum made a point of defending the medieval Crusades against the “American left who hates Christendom.” Historical issues aside (hey, what are a few massacres of infidels and Jews among friends?), what was this doing in a 21st-century campaign?

Nor is this only about sex and religion: he has also declared that climate change is a hoax, part of a “beautifully concocted scheme” on the part of “the left” to provide “an excuse for more government control of your life.” You may say that such conspiracy-theorizing is hardly unique to Mr. Santorum, but that’s the point: tinfoil hats have become a common, if not mandatory, G.O.P. fashion accessory.

Then there’s Ron Paul, who came in a strong second in Maine’s caucuses despite widespread publicity over such matters as the racist (and conspiracy-minded) newsletters published under his name in the 1990s and his declarations that both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act were mistakes. Clearly, a large segment of his party’s base is comfortable with views one might have thought were on the extreme fringe.

Finally, there’s Mr. Romney, who will probably get the nomination despite his evident failure to make an emotional connection with, well, anyone. The truth, of course, is that he was not a “severely conservative” governor. His signature achievement was a health reform identical in all important respects to the national reform signed into law by President Obama four years later. And in a rational political world, his campaign would be centered on that achievement.

But Mr. Romney is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, and whatever his personal beliefs may really be — if, indeed, he believes anything other than that he should be president — he needs to win over primary voters who really are severely conservative in both his intended and unintended senses.

So he can’t run on his record in office. Nor was he trying very hard to run on his business career even before people began asking hard (and appropriate) questions about the nature of that career.

Instead, his stump speeches rely almost entirely on fantasies and fabrications designed to appeal to the delusions of the conservative base. No, President Obama isn’t someone who “began his presidency by apologizing for America,” as Mr. Romney declared, yet again, a week ago. But this “Four-Pinocchio Falsehood,” as the Washington Post Fact Checker puts it, is at the heart of the Romney campaign.

How did American conservatism end up so detached from, indeed at odds with, facts and rationality? For it was not always thus. After all, that health reform Mr. Romney wants us to forget followed a blueprint originally laid out at the Heritage Foundation!

My short answer is that the long-running con game of economic conservatives and the wealthy supporters they serve finally went bad. For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racial divisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy — a process that reached its epitome when George W. Bush won re-election by posing as America’s defender against gay married terrorists, then announced that he had a mandate to privatize Social Security.

Over time, however, this strategy created a base that really believed in all the hokum — and now the party elite has lost control.

The point is that today’s dismal G.O.P. field — is there anyone who doesn’t consider it dismal? — is no accident. Economic conservatives played a cynical game, and now they’re facing the blowback, a party that suffers from “severe” conservatism in the worst way. And the malady may take many years to cure.

via Severe Conservative Syndrome – NYTimes.com.

Here’s hoping. If progressives in this country can show middle America how these radical ideals would set the country back a hundred years, we may be able to shift the arguments back to reason.

In honor of Ash Wednesday, I thought I would publish a review of Mel Gibson’s film.

This is a profoundly disturbing film. It is beautifully set and filmed, and very well acted. The Aramaic dialogue lent authenticity and beauty to the scenes. I, personally, did not find the film to convey a message of anti-Semitism.

But it is not the film it might have been. Why? I’m a stickler for a well-written script, and this film not only didn’t have one, it hardly required one. Also because, though I am not a believer, I have respect for the story, and a desire to see it told well. Gibson’s peculiar obsession with violence overwhelms it. Jaroslav Pelikan’s Jesus Through the Centuries points out that, while we think of Jesus as being a challenge to dominant cultures, the portrayals of him are usually a reflection and an endorsement of the dominant culture. So, in our extravagantly, pornographically violent times, Gibson produces a movie that extracts the most violent day of Jesus’ life and makes it stand in place of the whole story. In an age of religiously-inspired violence, it is a tragic decision for a director to make.

Gibson presumes that everyone knows Jesus and is sympathetic toward him. While that may be mostly true, it also absolves Gibson of the director’s difficult role in a tragedy: make the audience care for the characters, tell them why these people are worthy. Instead, he involves us in an orgy of gore, reveling in the blood spilled, and raising the awkward question: If this is the whole purpose of Jesus’ life, then what are we to think of the “villains”, Judas and Pilate, et al, who simply brought about that which must be done, that made that Friday, ironically, Good?

But Gibson as storyteller/evangelist is not interested in conundrums. He wants to make us feel good about feeling so bad. And he fails, at least in my case. I want to be ennobled by this story, as by stories of other selfless teachers who fell to the authorities of their times. I was appalled by the parents who took their children to see it. It is, hands down, one of the most graphically violent movies you will ever see, and parents should exercise the same caution with this film as they would with any other portrayal of a death by torture.

I knew that it was violent, and graphic, when I went to see it. What I hoped for was that Gibson would try to convey a sense of solidarity between Jesus and others who have been murdered, tortured, and persecuted. That sense was entirely missing. If he had run the quotation – “Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do unto me” – at the end, all of the violence might have been somewhat redeemed by urging us to treat others with the same compassion Gibson wants to evoke in us for Christ. Instead, he gives the resurrection a bare moment at the end, accompanied by military music, as if Jesus came back to kick some serious butt in retribution. I found the film, and its violence, utterly lacking in redemptive value. There is no grace here. I am not surprised that Gibson followed it up with yet another portrayal of human sacrifice, since that is what he reduced this story to: a mere barbaric bloodletting.

On CBS’s Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer asked presidential candidate Rick Santorum to clarify his controversial statement from yesterday, that “free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions.”

But rather than double back, Santorum instead chose to double down, saying that certain types of prenatal testing that are used to detect fetal abnormalities should not be offered for free as they “encourage abortions.”

“We’re talking about specifically prenatal testing and specifically amniocentesis,” Santorum said, “which is a… procedure that creates a risk of miscarriage when you have it and is done for the purposes of identifying maladies of a child in the womb, which in many cases, in fact, most cases, physicians recommend, particularly if there’s a problem, recommend abortion.”

A study conducted in 2006 by researchers at Mouth Sinai found that the risk of miscarriage from amniocentesis — a procedure necessary for the detection of chromosomal abnormalities (such as Down syndrome) and fetal infections — is 0.06%. In fact, there was no difference in “loss rate” between patients who had undergone amniocentesis, and those who had not

Santorum, whose daughter was diagnosed with a genetic disorder called Edwards syndrome, took issue with President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which guarantees free-of-charge access to prenatal testing.

[cbsnews / politico / mediaite.]

So, lemme see if I understand you, Rick: if you were carrying a baby with, say, anencephaly - missing most of it’s brain, meaning it would be stillborn – we shouldn’t know that? I guess God loves his mistakes, and wants you to go through the horror of delivering them dead.

Related articles

• Bob Schieffer And Santorum Clash Over His Belief That Prenatal Care Leads To Abortions (mediaite.com)