Intersex is real — and so is nature’s diversity

By Nick Gier | FāVS News Columnist

One of Donald’s Trump’s first acts as president was to sign an executive order recognizing “two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” Columnist Terrence Day tried to preempt this biological nonsense with a column entitled “Intersex is Real, just not Binary” in Moscow-Pullman Daily News in 2023. 

137 million intersexuals in the world

Sex differentiation lies on a continuum between male and female, and some people end up somewhere in the middle as “intersexual.” There may be as many as 137 million in the world in this category.

That means, as Day calculates, there are “34,000 intersexual Idahoans, and every one of them deserves a place to relieve themselves.” They also have a right not to be sexually mutilated at birth to enforce a false binary standard. Transexuals choose surgery, but intersexual infants are operated on, sometimes with debilitating effects, without their consent.

In what follows, I want to go beyond the human realm to describe the incredible array of sexualities in the animal world. Some intersexual humans have both sex organs, and this “simultaneous” hermaphroditism is found in most land gastropods. It is also found in 370 fish species. Almost 70% of corals (they are, of course, animals) have both male and female sex organs.

Same-sex sexual acts in 1,500 species

Writing for “Nature Ecology and Evolution” (volume 3, issue 12), four biologists report that “same-sex sexual behavior has been observed in over 1,500 animal species.” For example, 10% of male domestic sheep prefer their own sex exclusively, and 30% engage in same-sex sexual acts.

Calling some of these “homosexual” acts is a misnomer because many of these behaviors, such as a male animal mounting another, are socially dominant, not sexual. The men of Sodom engaged in, and top males in American prisons still perform, “power rape” not consensual sex. 

Many same sex animal behaviors appear to be intimate and long term. Lifelong pair bonding has been observed in male western gulls and black swans. Same-sex male black swans, which comprise 25% of mating pairs, will copulate with females but incubate their eggs after chasing them away (“Australian Wildlife Research” 8:135-46).  

As a strong argument for “gay” parenting, one could cite the fact that black swan male parents have fledgling rates 50% higher than the male-female parents. It is not surprising then to learn that “children with gay, lesbian, transgender or other sexual minority parents fare as well as, or better than, children with parents of the opposite sex.” 

Biologists George and Molly Hunt maintain a research project on California’s Santa Barbara Island. They were puzzled that 10% of the western gull nests they observed had six eggs rather than the usual two or three. What they discovered was that two females, after having mated with males, were not only nesting together, but they were also simulating the “cloaca to cloaca” copulation of the heterosexual gulls.

The Hunts’ research was not initially accepted because the editors of an ornithology journal judged the results “incongruous.” After their paper was finally published, the Hunts were condemned because they were insinuating that “homosexuality was, in fact, natural.” As one writer reported: “Congress intervened, temporarily blocking the National Science Foundation budget because it had partially funded the Hunts’ research.”

Virgin births in nature

Certain Christians point to the natural world to support the concept of virgin birth, citing parthenogenesis in creatures such as aphids, lizards, sharks, snakes, fleas and spiders. However, scientists maintain that virgin births cannot occur in humans, noting that even if such reproduction were biologically feasible, producing a male offspring would be extremely improbable since women lack Y chromosomes. Consequently, the virgin birth of Jesus should be understood as a matter of religious belief rather than biological possibility.

This evidence of the wide range of sexualities in nature puts the lie to the Catholic Church’s declaration that homosexuality is a peccatum contra naturam — a  “sin against nature.” In one brief before the Supreme Court 2008 case Lawrence v. Texas, animal sexuality was used to persuade the justices to strike down state laws against sodomy. As I always argued on this issue: heterosexuals, if surveys are to be believed, commit far more “unnatural” sex acts than homosexuals do.

Are blacks swans the devil’s brood?

A conservative Christian might argue that the fall of Adam and Eve corrupted all of creation. The Apostle Paul believed that original sin brought death to animals as well as human beings. But does animal mortality also mean corruption in all their behaviors?

When Paul states that we can look forward to the “redemption of our bodies,” does that mean that animals are redeemed for every deed they have done while embodied? Furthermore, does it mean that all bodies will be resurrected to the binary standard that Donald Trump has decreed? One medieval theologian, however, mused that the resurrected body would be that of a 30-year-old male without genitalia — in a word, a eunuch.

 Conservative evangelical Carl Henry states that Satan is the “ontological ground of evil” and that “man’s rebellion has consequences for the entire cosmos; it implicates all creation.” Even widely respected Christian theologian Alvin Plantinga has proposed that Satan and his demons are the cause of “natural” evils. These include disease, floods, earthquakes and animal pain and suffering. But, again, does that mean that animals suffer because of their own actions?

The foregoing theories, however, are not the orthodox Christian view of animals. The Christian tradition has always considered animals to be innocent of sin. They have no control over their behavior because they have no “understanding” (Psalms 32:9). This must mean that they are in no need of God’s redemption.

Anthropologists have found gender fluidity in many cultures. North American indigenous people use the term “two spirits” to indicate Euro-American gay and lesbian identities or a broader third gender category. In Tahiti the word māhū describes individuals who “embody both male and female qualities” and raerae, which is “more closely aligned with transgender women in Western cultures.”

Gender fluidity in South Asia

Sodomy was not a crime or even a sin in India before the British criminalized the act in 1861. The British also enforced similar laws in Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Singapore and Sri Lanka. The Indian Supreme Court finally overturned the law in 2018.

Even after the British banned them as criminals, Indians have always recognized trans women whom they call hijras. Most of them are born intersexual; they usually undergo surgery; and then they identify exclusively as women. For centuries they have performed as dancers and singers appearing at births, weddings and other occasions. With parental permission, they have also claimed intersexual infants as their own.

Even with discrimination and wide-spread bias, most hijras have made a living for themselves and they have built temples for their patron goddess. Always dressed in beautiful saris and made up meticulously, they hold annual beauty pageants. Sadly, because of their marginalization and lack of proper employment, they have high rates of HIV and other sexually-related diseases.

In 2014 India’s Supreme Court upheld the rights of transgender and non-binary people. The ruling recognized the existence of those “who identify themselves as neither male nor female,” and affirmed “the right of every human being to choose their gender.” India has established quotas for the employment and education of Dalits (formerly outcastes), and the court also extended these same provisions to its transgender citizens.

In 2016, a group of Pakistani Muslim clerics ruled that hijras could marry, and they could also be buried in their cemeteries. Muslim Bangladesh now gives tax breaks to firms who hire them. About three million Christians live in Pakistan, and their hijras are allowed to have their own churches.

Pakistan is a conservative Muslim majority country, but it still preserves the gender fluid history of the Indian subcontinent. For over 300 years Mughal India, was ruled by Muslim emperors, and hijras were appointed to high positions in their courts. Hijras, as well as eunuchs, were hired to provide security for the rulers’ harems.

In 2018, Pakistan passed the Transgender Persons Act, which permits Pakistanis to select their gender on official documents and bans discrimination in employment and public accommodations based on gender identity. The stigma of “sexual perversion” does not have the same hold on these conservative Muslims as it does for far too many Euro-American Christians.

Muslim Bangladesh has seen its first transgender news anchor; a hijra hosts a very successful Indian Tamil TV show for youth; Pakistan opened its first school for them; in 2015 a Hijra was elected mayor in the Indian city of Raigarh; and finally, the Indian Parliament now has its first transgender member.

God made them so

One of the most gratifying moments of my teaching career happened during a panel discussion on LGBTQ+ rights on my campus. I read the passages in Genesis that declare that everything God created was “good” or “very good” (1:9, 24, 31). I then assured any Jew or Christian in the audience that their scripture holds that their sexual orientation is God-given and that as such no one is born irredeemable.

A young man came up to me afterwards and said that he was a gay Christian. He confessed that he had struggled with his identity for many years, and that after my talk, he now felt reconciled to his faith and his sexual orientation.