Editor,

In response to the guest commentary of March 26, “Homosexuality is biologically natural, not deviant,” by Gregory A. Clark: Mr. Clark argues that because homosexual behavior occurs in animals, specifically bonobo apes, it is natural, and therefore not deviant.

Bonobos are great apes most closely related to the chimpanzee. These animals do regularly engage in homosexual relations. This fact is often used, as Mr. Clark does, to support human homosexual behavior because it proves this behavior is “natural.” This is not nearly the whole story, however. In the book “Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape” (Franz de Waal, University of California Press) we read: “Bonobos engage in sex in virtually every partner combination: male-male, male-female, female-female, male-juvenile, female-juvenile, and so on.”

It turns out that Bonobos, Mr. Clark’s paragons of patterning human behavior, are wanton pedophiles. Adults of both sexes regularly engage “juveniles” (children) in sexual activity. This is natural behavior for them. If what is natural is not deviant, how can we justify putting Warren Jeffs or any other pedophile in prison? Jeffs called what he did “marriage,” and using Mr. Clark’s own example, pedophilia is just as natural as homosexuality.

The fact is that there are many behaviors in animals which are reprehensible to humans. Infanticide, harems, rape, wanton promiscuity, and many other morally repugnant behaviors are common in the natural world. To argue that what is natural for animals is permissible for humans is absurd. Being human means having the ability to make morally significant choices to rise above natural tendencies.

Mr. Clark and many others make another fundamental error in conflating the types of characteristics of skin color and ethnicity with patterns of thought and behavior. The fact is that thoughts and behaviors are different sorts of things entirely than race or ancestry. Fallacy doesn’t stop being fallacy when it becomes fashionable. Homosexuality, by definition, is a set of thoughts and behaviors. As such, unlike race or ethnicity, it falls into the realm of morality. It makes no difference whether it occurs in nature and therefore is “natural” or what exactly the underlying cause is.

David Cook

Layton