From the Times Online UK
The results of that order are now coming through. One museum is
staging an exhibition that debunks the national myth that every
Norwegian was an heroic Resistance fighter in the Second World War. A
second is planning an exhibition on Vidkun Quisling, the ultimate
Norwegian collaborator. A third has an exhibition showing how badly
Norway has treated Gypsies.
But
the Natural History Museum in Oslo has gone one better. As America’s
religious right fulminates against homosexuality, Europe embraces gay
marriage, and leading homosexuals such as Martina Navratilova denounce
scientists in Oregon for attempting to make gay sheep straight, the
Naturhistorisk Museum is stepping squarely into the heart of a
controversy that dates back to at least AD1120 when the Church Council
of Nablus described homosexuality as a “sin against nature” .
It is staging a government-financed exhibition in its august
halls that shows that homosexuality — far from being unnatural — is
actually rampant in the animal world. Against Nature? is the
first exhibition in the world dedicated to gay animals, claims Petter
Bockman, its bearded and ponytailed scientific adviser, who also
happens to be the University of Oslo’s leading — and only — frog expert
(there are not many amphibians, gay or straight, this far north).
The facts have been staring scientists in the face for years,
Bockman says, as he stands in front of the gay giraffes. “It’s fairly
easy to see because the giraffe’s sex organs are not what you’d call
modest.” The problem, he contends, is that when researchers are
confronted by such behaviour, they choose to ignore it. They claim it
is irrelevant to their work, or fear ridicule or the loss of their
grants if they draw attention to it. They prefer to describe two
animals of the same sex frolicking with each other as “competition, a
form of greeting, ritualised combat, things like that — even when we
are talking full anal intercourse with ejaculation”.
The taboo was finally broken in 1999 when Bruce Bagemihl, a
gay biologist at the University of Wisconsin, published a book entitled
Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity.
Bagemihl had scoured every scientific journal and paper he could
lay his hands on for references to homosexuality in animals. Tucked
away at the end of long and erudite texts, or consigned to footnotes
and appendices, he found that homosexuality had been observed in no
fewer than 1,500 species, and well documented in 500 of them. The
earliest mention of animal homosexuality probably came 2,300 years ago
when Aristotle described two female hyenas cavorting with each other.
Bagemihl’s book provided the inspiration for this exhibition,
and any notion that homosexuality is a uniquely human trait is quickly
disposed of. You are greeted by a pair of swans — the very symbols of
romantic love — who turn out to be a female couple. “Up to a fifth of
all pairs are all male or all female,” reads the accompanying text. >> more at the times online uk
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