Rare Does NOT Equal Unnatural.

“If homosexuality were natural there would be no procreation.”

Implication of this: homosexuality is unnatural.

So commented a co-worker recently when they made the naive mistake of randomly bringing up the subject and possibly thinking I would agree.  Instead this co-working was given a quick and brief set of arguments that basically blew that train of thought out of the water.

In the years of hearing homophobic people give excuse after excuse as to why they feel homosexuality shouldn’t be accepted, I can honestly say the above argument is one of the most inept I’ve come across.

To show why, here’s a few seemingly unrelated facts gleaned from the internet, please note that the following statistics are approximate based on multiple resources:

• 17% of the population is born with blue eyes.
• 10-30% of ethnic populations where it is commonest (Celtic descendent, etc.) have red hair.  
• Fun Fact: Red hair is actually caused by a series of genetic mutations.
• 10% of the population is left handed.
• 1-2% of the population has some form of Autism
• LESS THAN 1% of the population has Down Syndrome (1 in 700-900)
• 0.0055% (1 in 18,000) of the population is born with Adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD (the genetic disease featured in the movie Lorenzo’s Oil)

Why are some people born with traits that are not commonly found within the general population?

Just 50 years ago or so most children were discouraged or even punished for preferring to use their left hand.

Do these traits make us any less natural that the general population?  I know I didn’t choose to be left handed.  I know that trying to use my right hand feels very unnatural for me.

I know that I’ve had to adapt to a certain point to get by in a predominantly right handed world and that consequently I’ve become ambidextrous in some tasks as a result but that doesn’t make me right-handed.

Then there is the whole, “if it were natural there would be no procreation of the species”.

Science has already diagnosed numerous disorders that involve the reproductive system.  I have known 2 separate women in my life that were born without ovaries.  They just don’t have them.

They didn’t choose this.  It happened to them on a genetic level.  They will not be able to procreate the usual way but that doesn’t make their condition unnatural.

There are many conditions, genetic “diseases”, syndromes, etc, we recognize as rare but natural.  For a lot of them, we have no idea what the cause is.  We just know they exist.

This is why I find it so unfathomable that it is still such a stretch of the imagination for so many people that homosexuality could easily be, and probably is, a rare but natural condition too.