"It's just not natural?"

How many times have you heard someone evaluate some moral matter with the words “it’s just not natural?” Even societies that have came such a long way continue to put some limit on human action based on "what is natural". Ideas about what is "natural" are used in dicussions of all sorts of human behavior, including homosexuality. For example, homosexuality could be condemned through the simple argument that biologically, human genitalia was naturally meant to combine with the opposite sex for the production of offspring. However, out of all the species who practice homosexual actions, humans are the only ones who are oppressed when they try (Kluger 337). Bagemihl suggests that if homosexuality comes naturally to other creatures, then maybe it is time to stop oppressing over the fact that it could possibly come naturally to humans as well (Kluger 338).

Since the middle of the twentieth century, societies have moved from what is “natural” to natural human rights like the protection against slavery, social persecution, and injury to person or property. The concept of nature condemns the behavior that these laws prevent. When also speaking of condeming, the term "unnatural" has been used to condemn everything from racial equality to female suffrage to homosexuality.

Nature is used to to justify as well as condemn many aspects of human behavior. This also applies to the idea of homosexuality. The animal kingdom is much more sexually complex than most people know (Kluger 338). As he also points out, witnessing same-sex activity and understanding it are two different things, and we shouldn't have to look to the animal world to see what's moral or ethical (Kluger 339). Althought the findings of homosexual tendencies in animals suggest that it is a natural tendency, the debate of this subject will most likely continue on.