By Anne-Françoise Hivert
    Libération

    Wednesday 25 October

    Is homosexuality an unnatural behavior? Since October 12, Oslo's Museum of Natural History has presented a global exclusive, an exposition devoted to animal homosexuality. A subject still not very well documented. And that because of the various taboos the exposition's organizers intend to decapitate. Their ambition: "To refute the too well-known argument according to which homosexual behavior is a crime against nature." Religious extremists protest. Yet, the project's director Geir Söli notes, "If it was possible to mount the exposition in Oslo, that's because Norwegian society is far more tolerant than elsewhere."

    Explicit Photographs

    Couples of the same sex can make partnership agreements and adopt their partner's child. Legalization of homosexual marriage is under discussion. And discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is prohibited there. In 2003, the Norwegian authority in charge of museums decided to refashion the expositions in its great museums more to the taste of the day. The idea came to Geir Söli "after listening to a preacher on the radio who declared that homosexuality was against nature." Four years earlier, American biologist Bruce Bagemihl had published a work entitled Biological Exuberance in which he inventoried 450 species that manifest homosexual behavior. Oslo's Natural History Museum chose about thirty of them. The photographs are explicit. They show a male giraffe mounting another male, a couple of female monkeys going at it, and two highly aroused male whales rubbing against one another.

    First lesson: "Sex is dictated not only by the reproductive instinct, but also because animals take pleasure in it," observes Geir Söli. Second lesson: physical relations between animals of the same sex serve a social function. Bonobos, for example, resolve their conflicts "through orgies in which the sex of a partner has absolutely no significance," explains zoologist Petter Böckman. Now, these homosexual relations may be transient only or may also last a lifetime for certain animals. The phenomenon has been known since antiquity. Aristotle observed it among hyenas. Yet few scientists have interested themselves in it up to the present. Petter Böckman sees that as "fear of ridicule or even dread of losing funding." The researchers who are interested in the subject, moreover, often feel an obligation to justify their choices by the human implications of their subject of study.

    "To Burn in Hell"

    In Norway, opponents are mobilizing. Monday, the conservative daily paper Dagen denounced a "manipulation." For detractors, it's simple: just because animals have homosexual relations doesn't mean people must also! When the exposition was announced at the beginning of the year, a preacher let the organizers know that they were "all going to burn in hell."