This is really silly. You could similarly characterize heterosexual behavior in dogs as mere "masturbation."
No, I would characterize it as mating behavior intended to ensure the survival of the species.
Unluckily for your position, dogs humping is not the sum and substance of the evidence for homosexuality in animals. Our closest relatives, the bonobo, are fully bisexual -- it's actually rare to see an individual that doesn't exhibit at least some same-sex behavior. Moreover, sexuality is an important component of bonobo socialization -- contrary to your assertion, same-sex behavior in this animal is not just the reduction of an indiscriminate biological drive. Chimps, orangutans, and gorillas have all been observed in same-sex acts, though with lesser frequency than bonobos.
As even posting in the Celestial room here is no proof against having to deal with the intellectual Lollypop Guild when it makes its unfortunate appearance, I suppose I will have to field this inanity before we can move back toward the ever elusive real world (its no accident, none at all, that the same people who believe in one kind of ideologically driven psuedoscience (homosexual animals) also believe in others forms (AGW, "tipping points" in the climate, Ozone depletion from hairspray cans and refrigerators, eugenics, ethnic supremacy (multiculturalism, "ebonics" etc.) evolutionary psychology, dialectical materialism etc.).
The Bonobo example is as inane as the examples of sheep and penguins. There is not a shred of evidence that these animals are doing anything more than using sexual behavior as a proxy for other emotions and drives, including general affection or bonding between individuals, dominance, aggression, and competitive territoriality. All homosexual-like behavior in nature has been linked in nature to displaced aggression, dominance, or bonding behavior in which sexual mannerisms and behavior are used as proxies for other intense feelings or drives, including mating drives which can become so intense for animals that masturbatory behavior ensues.
Saliently, the vast majority of such SS behavior has been observed in captivity, where numerous examples of dysfunctional or aberrant behavior are well known among intelligent animals, including homosexual behavior, and not in natural environments
There is no evidence at all that Bonobo behavior is anything else than homosexual-
like. There is no reason to think that Bonobo's are homosexual (or bi-sexual) in some intrinsic way and is not being done as either a displaced expression of other feelings or for pure entertainment purposes.
Secondly (and why this even has to be mentioned is astonishing), we should not be looking to the animal world for cues to our own conduct. There are no ethics or morality in the animal world. There are in ours, without which there would be no tolerable civilization at all. Even if every Bonobo in a family of them ran around with Queer Nation T-shirts shouting "Gay rights now!), it would change nothing about this point. Animals do a great many things to each other and with each other that we do not, and should not, under any circumstances do.
As it stands, however, ascribing actual homosexual orientation to animals of any kind is the desperate imposition of an ideology upon a universe that otherwise, will not comply with your desires.
A substantial percentage of male sheep will only copulate with other male sheep. When you say there's no such thing as "gay" behavior in animals, you're contradicting the consensus of ethologists -- you're putting yourself above the true experts.
The very fact that the logical fallacy of "consensus" now arrives to circumvent debate is as telling as it needs to get. We've seen this, of course, in another area of pseudoscientific head gaming, so no need to point any of that out here.
In any case, ethnologists are not wildlife biologists, so why does their opinion matter? Why are anthropologists competent to judge what motives animals have for certain kinds of behavior (and, indeed, wildlife biologists aren't. External behavior, instincts and drives, yes, but motives?).
The evidence that homosexuality in humans is not a choice is overwhelming. The brains of male homosexuals are measurably different than heterosexuals (specifically, the hypothalamus is shaped differently), and this difference is consistent throughout development. Biologists have stimulated homosexuality in rats by giving them treatment that changes the hypothalamus. How could any of this be true if homosexuality were a choice?
Every statement you've made above is utterly and unambiguously bogus and long ago debunked. This is almost hilariously uninformed. I might suggest doing some serious reading on this subject and avoid taking talking points from ACT-UP fund raising literature.
No. Gay rights activists wouldn't have had a reason to bring up animal behavior if social conservatives weren't constantly bashing them as "unnatural."
At perhaps three percent of the population and given its very odd and ritualized sub-behaviors sub-identities, as well as its well documented hyperpromiscuity and disproportionate psychological problems associated with its lifestyle, that appears rather obvious
You are wrong as a matter of science.
There is no science regarding the origins of homosexuality at all, except that there is probably some genetic component or variable in at least some percent of the homosexual population.
There is no "gay gene" That is mainstream media and gay rights lobby junk science. There is no evidence whatsoever that anyone is "born" homosexual, as to core orientation. Homosexuality is no more inborn than bisexuality, or a desire to engage in BDSM or any number of other sexual fetishes. Homosexuality found a political voice within the cultural Marxist/postmodern moment of the last forty years, and that's all that's ever happened to give homosexuality its halo of ideological importance and the doting over it engaged in by social leftists.
We no more about the "cause" of homosexuality in any given individual than we knew before you or I were born.
Kinsey is dead JST, long live science!