It was probably back in the summer when I heard about the R&B emerged-from-the-underground singer, Frank Ocean, coming out to the shock and congratulations of the liberal world as a gay rhythm and blues artist. I remember thinking how surprised I was, not because he was gay in a hypersexual and steretoypically straight medium, but because I knew his song "Songs 4 Women" fairly well and now when I listened to it I would have to acknowledge that Ocean wasn't even necessarily singing about himself, or maybe he was singing about himself but replacing a male love interest with a female one, or maybe he's been in a straight relationship and only now identifies himself as gay. His announcement complicated a seemingly straightforward song with very simply 'straight' lyrics, and much like the reality of human sexuality, it is much more complicated than narrow categories can probably ever appreciate or express.
I only recently caught on to another beautiful contribution to the hip-hop world, this time from Macklemore and Ryan Lewis: "Same Love." The opening verse is especially profound. It really shows an admirable understanding of complicated sexual relations:
When I was in the 3rd grade
I thought that I was gay
Cause I could draw, my uncle was,
And I kept my room straight--
I told my mom, tears rushing down my face,
She's like, "Ben, you've loved girls since before pre-K"
Trippin', yeah, I guess she had a point, didn't she
A bunch of stereotypes all in my head
I remember doing the math like
"Yeah, I'm good at little league,"
A pre-conceived idea of what it all meant
For those that like the same sex had characteristics.
The right-wing conservatives think it's a decision
And you can be cured with some treatment and religion
Man-made, rewiring of a pre-disposition
Playing God
Ahh nah, here we go,
America the brave
Still fears that we don't know
And God loves all his children--it's somehow forgotten
But we paraphrase a book written
3500 years ago
I don't know
To add onto all this beautiful music, I actually got to add some scientific appreciation to my month--which is fantastic, because I love science. Today at work, my coworker and I get into a long discussion and he ends up wondering whether there has been any science in the possibility of same-sex relations among animals--not simply sexual, but we're talking about the sorts of bonds that we often admire as almost-human mating-for-life pairs. The idea fascinated me; I quickly typed into Google something like "same-sex mammal mate for life" and was truly surprised at how appropo the first result was, an io9 article linking to this BBC Nature treat:
"Homosexual zebra finches form long-term bond"
By Victoria Gill (15 August 2011)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/14479670
Yes, I noticed these were not mammals. I still don't know what research has been done on this phenomenon in mammals. Here's an excerpt from the bird piece, though, which cited a study by researchers from UC Berkeley and the U. of Saint-Etienne specifically designed to look at this question that my co-worker raised:
"First, she and her colleagues, Clementine Vignal and Nicolas Mathevon from the University of Saint-Etienne, raised young finches in same-sex groups. More than half of the birds paired up with another bird of the same sex.
The team then closely monitored the birds for signs that they had bonded fully.
Bonded birds, Dr Elie explained, perch side by side, nestled together. They also greet each other by 'nuzzling' beaks."
But they didn't stop there. The team then introduced females to these boy birds to see if they were really just adapting to an all-boy world:
"In the next stage of their study, the
scientists brought novel females to a group of bonded male-male pairs.
Out of eight males that were engaged in same-sex pair-bonds, five
ignored the females completely and continued to interact with their male
partner.
The findings indicate that, even in birds, the drive to find a mate is far more complicated than simply the need to reproduce. 'A pair-bond in socially monogamous species represents a cooperative partnership that may give advantages for survival,' said Dr Elie. 'Finding a social partner, whatever its sex, could be a priority.'"
We so often assume that nature is so much in line with our moral standards--most Christian moral codes are, after all, somewhat reconciled with Aristotle's philosophies of nature. But we also have to acknowledge how biased even science has been in confirming exactly what we expect to find. How often do you closely study animal behavior, or how well can you tell females apart from males? How much is animal behavior determined my environmental demands and is different behavior "unnatural" if it doesn't appear until new conditions are met?
The zebra finches study, interestingly, can be compared to another study completed a few years ago that looked at King penguins. That study was not even looking for homosexual behavior, but was studying penguin behavior more generally, like an anthropology study for birds (seriously, how often do we look at animals in their natural environments to really try to understand their societies?). And it just so happened the researchers were tracking the genders of the birds, which cannot be easily identified by human sight since boys and girls look virtually the same to us--I am absolutely hinting at our general observation bias when we make generalized claims about "you never see two animals ___ or ___"--and found some boy birds flirting with boy birds. One pair of males and one pair of females actually learned each other's mating songs, which was typically seen as evidence of a mated pair.
So who's to say what's scientifically and evolutionary "natural" and what's "unnatural" behavior here? I'm very proud to learn we are building a more substantial case for the reality of homosexual relations outside of human relations, regardless of what label you want to put on it.
"Same Love," by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
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