One of the phalacies most loved by homophobes everywhere is the idea that sex is intrinsecally linked to reproduction. Those things can't be sepparated, they insist. The only reason for sex to exist is so that people can reproduce. Sex between two men or women can't lead to reproduction. Therefore, this kind of sex is anti-natural. Therefore, it's okay to discriminate people who pratice this kind of sex, and it's okay to deny them civil rights and treat them like semi-citizens. The logic in that line of thought is..that's right, none. But surprisingly, an alarming number of people suspend logic enough to see that ''reasoning'' as..well, reasonable.

But there are so many flaws in that ''reasoning'' that explaining them it's easier by picking them sepparately:

As a ''prologue'', it's important to point out that reproduction was NOT the reason why sexual relationships appeared in nature. Living beings were reproducing fine assexually, and a lot of them still do it today (such as worms, amoeba and a lot of plants). The reasons for sexual reproduction to start had a lot more to do with selecting good genes than with producing offspring.

With that in mind, let's start by the phalacy debunked more blatanly by the facts: it should be obvious to anyone, even those who lack a sex life, that about 98% of the time people have sex, they are NOT trying to reproduce. In fact, a simple walk through a drugstore will reveal that most of the times people have sex they are actively AVOIDING reproduction. A look at medical statistics will show that a lot of people undergo medical procedures to AVOID ANY POSSIBILITY OF REPRODUCING. Obviously, these people continue to have a sex life even after all chances of that sex life producing an offspring are gone. Human kind have been using contraception almost since the start of civilization. There are accounts of local ''potions'' used to avoid pregnancy among the Egyptians since the Pharaohs era, and even primitive ''condoms'' made of animals's guts were found in the Middle East. Humanity has ALWAYS had sex for reasons other than reproduction. The very existence of very common sexual pratices such as oral and anal sex should be enough to prove that people have sex mostly for pleasure and intimacy, not to produce children. Straight people, even a couple trying to conceive, have sex for those reasons, the same reasons that lead homossexual people to sex.

With that being pointed out, let's go to another implicit phalacy in this homophobic ''reasoning''. The idea that same-sex couples shouldn't have the right to marriage cause their relationships are ''unnatural'' implies both that marriage is natural and that is a right only held by people who will produce an offspring. As for the latter, obviously isn't true. Fertility is not a pre-requisite for marriage. Getting married is choosing someone to whom you want to assing certain dutys and rights. It's an individual choice, and disrespecting a person's will in something that important is a brutal violation of their rights, and something that should never happen in a democratic country. But let's say for a moment we believe the homophobic phalacy: we think only natural relationships should have the State's protection. But then we would have to deny the legal protection of marriage to anyone, gay or straight. Cause marriage, and monogamy itself, is unnatural. With the exception of swans and lobsters, no other animals are monogamous...and for those of you saying ''Hah..penguins!'', remember all they do is look for the animal they hooked up with on last mating season..if they don't find it they go ahead and mate with someone else (after all, as a friend of mine put it, ''They all look alike anyway''). But if someone wants to play the monogamous penguin card, I'll just play the gay penguin card and we're even. Men are bound by nature to be polygamous, since it's way better when it comes to spreading their genes. That's a well-documented scientific fact. But since what's considered ''natural'' for homophobics seems to be the behavior of other animals (if that wasn't the case, the very existence of homossexuality in human nature should be enough to prove its ''naturality''), that's an even worse case for marriage. No animal, maybe with the exception of those two monogamous species, live stable, monogamous relationships. Marriage is a human creation, that very often fails, contradicted by human nature.

I'm not saying marriage is a bad thing. It's a healthy human creation, and it's healthy that loving relationships get governement protection. Which leads us to the most important point: a lot, if not most, of things in our society, such as marriage, monogamy, adoption, contraception or taking care of the elderly and sick, are unnatural human creations. There's no moral element in nature. In fact, when it comes to sex, we would be repulsed by a lot of things that are very common among animals, such as incest and rape.

We don't follow animal nature when it comes to anything else related to sex, relationships or family. Besides, it's ironic, to say the least, that animals should be considered a role-model for a group of people (the religious right) that deny Evolution! Why should we look at animals to find out what it's ''natural'' when, according to those people, we're not even related to them??