Gay Pride Made Science Smarter

In February of 1911, the Terra Nova Expedition landed at frozen Cape Adare, Antarctica. From a ship of 65 of Britain's finest sailors and scientists, six men came ashore, intent on becoming the first ever to reach the South Pole.

Instead of making exploration history, though, the men spent the entire winter in a hut by the shoreline, unable to find a route inland. While Captain Robert Falcon Scott refigured his plans, the scientists resigned themselves to research.

Among the six scientists was Dr. George Murray Levick, serving as a zoologist and Surgeon Lieutenant. To pass the time, Levick took it upon himself to study the local penguins.

The entire winter of 1911, Levick observed and recorded behaviors of the Adélie Penguins. But, what had begun as a pastime became an attack on his sensibilities. Levick discovered, among other behaviors, that penguins could be gay (*gasp*).

Terrified of public reception, Levick wrote his notes in Greek so that only educated peers could understand them. When he published his research, he omitted his section on homosexuality, only circulating his gay penguin information among select experts.

His discoveries on penguin sexuality remained hidden until, in 2012, they were posthumously rediscovered and published.

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Levick's story isn't unique. He wasn't the first or the last to conceal or ignore queerness in the animal kingdom. Until recently, that was the norm. Riddled with the biases of their ethics or fear of their societies, early naturalists refrained from providing any queer perspective, data, or anecdote.

When we finally stopped ignoring queerness and encouraged queer voices and studies in the sciences, science got smarter. With Gay Pride came the realization that we were oversimplifying biology. Furthermore, we were damaging the truth by taking a heteronormative approach.

What followed was a vast unearthing of hidden notes on queerness and an even more substantial improvement to our scientific understanding of life.

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Darwin's Paradox

From the publishing of On the Origin of Species, most scientists focused on reproduction as the driving factor of life. The goal for all creatures was thought to be baby-making and nothing else.

It was a convenient excuse to avoid any form of sexuality outside of "hetero" for those of the past. Stuffy 19th (and 20th) century scientists would guffaw and exclaim, "Non-reproductive sexuality is simply unnatural". They conveniently forgot Darwin's mentions of non-breeding individuals within species.

This way of thinking was a severe disservice to biology (and to Darwin's writings). It failed to provide any explanation for the evolution of bees who, besides the queen and her mates, were sterile. It couldn't explain why pack animals would leave breeding up to specific members, why masturbation was common in the animal kingdom, and why some individuals across Animalia didn't seem to be interested in sex at all.

Notably, it also failed to explain the thousands of species with individuals that preferred same-sex partners.

It took until 1963 for an explanation to re-enter the world of research. Finally, a scientist named William Hamilton popularized the idea that individuals didn't need to reproduce to be viable. Instead, individuals could fulfill the evolutionary need to pass on genes by caring for their close relatives.

The concept, called kin selection, meant that individuals didn't need to reproduce to be successful by evolution's standards. Shortly after, scientists connected the idea to homosexuality (notably, just five years after the first Gay Pride parade).

With this idea came a flood of new studies and hypotheses. Same-sex practices was finally accepted as evolutionarily viable! With that scientific realization came a vastly better understanding of behavioral science, biology, and even the evolution of altruism!

The Gay Gene™️

After the first Gay Pride, gayness had entered the mainstream. Science, after just a bit of a lag, followed suit with discussions on the subject.

Just three years after the first Pride, the American Psychiatric Association quietly removed homosexuality from their list of psychological disorders.

They based their reasoning on a study by Dr. Evelyn Hooker, who in 1957 found no mental health difference between gay and heterosexual men. It took the APA until 1975 to publicly state their choice and the reasoning behind it.

The announcement - that homosexuality wasn't something one could catch from specific environmental experiences - started a scientific frenzy, especially in genetics. When nurture was no longer an option, researchers began to comb through DNA.

What resulted from this frenzy was phenomenal. In the process of looking for a "gay gene", scientists accidentally discovered much about how DNA works! Through gay genetics, we found more about how twins work and more about the genetics of behavior and polygenic inheritance.

Through the gay gene search, we also broke records on the size and scope of genetic studies. In 2019, one group of scientists analyzed almost half a million different genomes to identify the genetics of gayness— one of the largest genome studies to date.

They discovered that the number of genes that determined same-sex attraction was beyond them and their study. In the process, they revealed to the entire field that behavioral genetics was a frontier ready for exploration.

Since the acceptance of queerness by scientists, genealogy has seen tremendous growth, attention, and advancement.

Queer Ecology

Just a year after homosexuality was deemed evolutionarily viable and three years after psychologists removed it from the DSM, the foundational texts of queer theory emerged. Over the subsequent decades, the ideas (challenging binaries, norms, and heteronormativity) grew in popularity. By the 90s, queer theory was both a social philosophy and a political movement.

Twenty years after queer theory began, scientists began to commonly apply the way of thinking to ecology, particularly the sections on dismantling dualism.

In the 90s, ecologists began to process nature in a new way, disregarding the notions of human exceptionalism, the binary system of natural and unnatural, and even the distinction between living and non-living. They began to see life as a continuing process and us humans as part of a beautiful single system.

Science had (and still has) a tendency to put things in categories when it wasn't (or isn't) warranted. Queer ecology recognized that many things genuinely exist on a spectrum and aren't as simple as previously thought.

With the application of queer theory to science, a deeper understanding of life emerged, and we began to realize just how many biases we were letting shape our science.

We were biased by anthropocentrism. The introduction of queer theory helped scientists identify and remove an entire layer of bias, making ecology much more accurate. With this shift of worldview followed a generation of scientists that found new ways to look at things.

Suddenly, without old bias, we saw a more accurate view of gender and sex. When scientists dismantled human primacy via queer ecology, they found that we weren't studying animal intelligence correctly and significantly advanced that entire section of science!

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The last 51 years of improving queer acceptance led to smarter science. With Gay Pride came better science and better (less biased) scientists. As biologists continue to strengthen scientific representation and diversity, listen to queer perspectives, and include all spectrums of love and sexuality in their studies, we'll recover a better understanding of life itself (which is literally the goal of biology, mind you).

Gay Pride made science smarter. It continues to improve studies today as biases are acknowledged and dismantled. Only time will tell what tremendous discoveries it will make tomorrow.