ABSTRACT
For many years, in many countries, sexual activity between people of the same sex has been stigmatized, criminalized, and punishable by death. People who engage in such sexual activity, who identify as desiring to engage in it, or who are perceived as desiring it have been subject to discrimination. Sexual orientations are clearly embodied. Turning to immutability, the evidence is strong that people's conscious choices do not play a significant role in the development of sexual orientations. Stories of animal sexual activity, although perhaps interesting in their own right, have little to tell us about what sexual activity is moral for humans. Animals engage in many behaviors that are morally wrong for humans to engage in, and there are many behaviors that animals do not engage in that are central to human existence. The problems with the etiological and the sex-discrimination arguments point to a better strategy for critiquing sexual-orientation discrimination.
