uality is pronounced among both sexes in several species certainly in all domestic fowl.

According to the storybooks, the monogamous family seemed well established throughout nature, carrying with it the same sex roles our society considers proper-the male as a good provider and protector of the family and the female having all the maternal instinct and blessed fidelity. Actually, examples of this idyllic. picture are somewhat rare-a few birds and such disreputable animals. as the wolf, the fox and the weasel.

Paternal instincts are so far from being universal as to be quite the exception. Mother love is more common, but not universal. Among ostriches, seahorses and others, the father serves the "natural" maternal role and females have nothing to do with hatching, nursing or childcare.

As for homosexuality, we find it cropping up throughout nature, not perhaps in every species, but certainly in every other one, and very pronounced in many (as our Biological Survey Course at ONE INSTITUTE illustrates). The fact that a heavy incidence of homosexuality is reported among almost every sort of domesticated animal could indicate that closer observation would turn up even more evidence in the wild breeds. Gide noted, in CORYDON (an excellent, though somewhat dated essay on this subject) that every breeder seemed quite astonished to discover homosexuality among his animals, few suspecting that the story is similar whether one raises ducks or pigeons, goats or cows.

Male frogs in heat often embrace other males, but observers suppose this is because bullfrogs aren't very adept at recognizing the sex of a prospective partner. With fireflies it's more definite, and quite a sight since the males have all the fire, and sometimes

one

gather by the thousands in glittering orgiastic stag parties.

It could be argued that homosexuality proceeded heterosexuality in evolution, since the Copromonas and other one-celled Paramecia which alternate sexual reproduction with simple cell division form a union of like individuals. (In other Paramecia, apparently a later development, sex differentiation occurs, and the individuals who unite sexually are distinctly different-comparable to the sperm and ova of higher creatures.) Nor is sex change or hermaphroditism at all rare among animals.

What we discover in the long run, and the evidence is overwhelming, is that nature is infinitely more varied, more "tolerant" than those moralists who so glibly use the terms natural and unnatural.

Ford and Beach, in their PATTERNS OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR maintain that. "When it is realized that 100 per cent of the males in certain societies engage in homosexual as well as heterosexual alliances, and when it is understood that many men and women in our own society are equally capable of relations with partners of the same or opposite sex, and finally, when it is recognized that this same situation obtains in many species of subhuman primates, then it should be clear that one cannot classify homosexual and heterosexual tendencies as being mutually exclusive or even opposed to each other." Also. "The crosscultural and cross-species comparisons ... combine to suggest that a biological tendency for inversion of sexual behavior is inherent in most if not all mamals including the human species."

Finding homosexuality (and other variant sex patterns) so widespread in nature, we need no longer permit it to be labelled unnatural. Homosexuality is a distinct part (if perhaps minor) of the natural pattern of things.