gosh.... even animals can be gay!!!! from TIME

from: Yep, They're Gay by TIME

Zoologists have known for many years that homosexuality isn't uncommon
among animals. (My own cat has raised suspicions ever since he tried to
mount a cowering male dachshund.) But I was surprised to learn recently
that male sheep exhibit homosexuality at least as often as humans:
roughly 8% of rams turn out to have sex exclusively with other rams.

This
little piece of faunal ephemera might otherwise have gone unnoticed
outside the rarely intersecting subcultures of gays and shepherds. But
a few months ago, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals launched
a p.r. campaign on behalf of gay sheep. PETA claims that researchers in
Oregon are killing gay sheep and cutting open their brains in order to
learn how to turn gay rams straight. A few weeks ago, London's Sunday
Times picked up the story in an unnerving article that states the
research "raises the prospect that pregnant women could one day be
offered a treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their
offspring will be homosexual." The story has pinged around quite a few
blogs since, and Rush Limbaugh and Martina Navratilova have taken their
predicted positions. (Limbaugh: gay activists finally have a reason to
oppose abortion. Navratilova: homophobes are murdering gay sheep.)

It's
a pity that a story with so much potential for moral indignation and
bad sheep puns (ewegenics!) turns out to be wrong. To be sure, a group
of researchers led by physiologist Charles Roselli of Oregon Health
& Science University has killed about 55 sheep, homosexual and
heterosexual, in order to study the neurological basis of sexual
attraction. They have confirmed that test sheep are gay by allowing
them to pick among males and females that have been restrained in
stanchions to await sexual intercourse.

But Roselli says he and
his colleagues never had any intention of creating a drug that will
turn people straight. And while they have examined whether sheep
sexuality can be altered with various treatments, that's not the sole
point of their work. Instead, like many other scientists over the past
two decades, they are conducting basic research into the nature of
sexuality by manipulating hormones in animals. (Such experiments were
done on zebra finches--to see if females would pair with other
females--as long ago as 1988.) A colleague of Roselli's, Fredrick
Stormshak of Oregon State, says a means of identifying gay sheep would
be useful to breeders who need to ensure that males will reproduce, but
the team hasn't had much success. In its most recent experiments, the
group used drugs to block the action of a hormone thought to play a
role in making most sheep straight (in other words, this test was
designed to produce more homosexual sex, not less). But the results
were inconclusive.

The Oregon group's work has shown, however,
that gay rams have different brain structures from heterosexual ones,
news that should cheer those who see homosexuality and heterosexuality
as mere biological variations. (Another small but fascinating finding:
all gay rams are butch--none present themselves sexually the way ewes
do.) As Roselli acknowledges in his papers, sexuality in humans is far
more complex than in sheep. The whole notion that researchers studying
farm animals could develop a "cure" for human homosexuality is a
fantasy of the far left and the far right, which both value a gay-sheep
"scandal" more than the messy reality that is Roselli's work.

But
one could have a good argument about whether adorable little sheep
should be killed for sex research. As a gay man, I tend to believe the
more we know about the complex interplay of biology and environment
that shapes sexuality, the less time we will spend nourishing Old
Testament anachronisms about sex.

The more pressing question for
me is, What would happen if research like Roselli's did lead to, as the
Sunday Times imagined, "a 'straightening' procedure [such as] a hormone
supplement for mothers-to-be, worn like a nicotine patch"? I hope
scientists have better things to do, but would a Hetero Patch be so
awful? It would allow bigoted women to get what they want--straight
kids--and ensure that gay kids grow up with moms who, at the very
least, didn't try to prevent their existence. Gay people seem to fear
we would die out if such a device existed. But the elaborate
combination of genes, hormones and psychology that produces same-sex
attraction has persisted, against all odds, through the millenniums.
Gays have survived Darwinian selection, Nazis, the dulling effects of
Will & Grace. I don't think a little patch would ever keep some
rams from wanting other rams.