Naturalistic fallacy
Naturalistic fallacy is the assumption that whatever is natural is good, and vice versa. It’s far too easily based on cherry-picking and nonsense, and is not a solid foundation for ethics.
In Perv, Jesse Bering points out that we jump too quickly to the naturalistic fallacy in pursuit of LGBTQ rights:
Those who use examples of same-sex liaisons in other species to justify the social acceptance of gays and lesbians are every bit as guilty of the naturalistic fallacy as the religious conservatives who perceive some sort of “obviousness” in these behaviors being morally wrong due to their “unnaturalness.” After all, sex acts with reproductively immature juveniles and forced copulation are also commonly found in nature—in fact, much more so than homosexuality. Yet these more impolite details about the sex lives of other species haven’t led to many moral arguments (or at least persuasive ones) for human adults having sex with children or men raping women. And they shouldn’t. But we need to be careful here, because in cherry-picking features of the natural world to defend one social category—in this case, gays and lesbians—we risk shaking the whole tree.
It’s a great rhetorical device, and it’s flawed logic. We can do better, especially when it comes to sexual ethics.
Same-sex behaviors in other species are interesting in their own right. But are we humans really that lost in the ethical wilderness that we’re actually seeking guidance from monkeys, crawfish, and penguins about the acceptable use of our genitals? We engage in the same questionable reasoning when citing other nonmonogamous species to support our views on polyamorous (or “open”) relationships (this was in fact a message central to the popular book Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá).
Besides, he adds:
Even if we were indeed the lone queer species in an infinite universe of potentially habitable planets, it’s unclear to me how that would make marriage between two gay adults in love with each other less okay.
Interestingly, the better option seems to be is it harmful? instead of is it natural? Not because the concept is any less fallible, but because we’re more aware that it is. It’s a much more challenging question. Knowing something is subjective instead of empirical helps us tread more thoughtfully. At least in theory—first we have to wrestle the concept of harm away from abstract concepts and symbolic appeals to emotion:
For social conservatives, the damage might even be seen as inflicted on symbolic bodies—“America,” for example, “the Church,” “society,” or “the sanctity of marriage.” Saying that a behavior is “harmful to America” or that it’s “destructive to society” is a bit like giving corporations the legal status of personhood. That is, it only makes sense to those with an agenda. The scientific definition of a “person” as a carbon-based life-form resembles nothing of the circuitous legal definition that enables a profit-driven corporation to claim that same status. Likewise, pain and distress can occur only at the level of a subjectively experiencing organism (human or animal) in possession of pain receptors and a nervous system able to register emotional trauma, not at the level of an abstract entity without a brain. The problem of sexual harm concerns living, breathing creatures, not political parties, nations, or worldviews.
And in an ideal world, we’d be more aware too of symbolic disgust and moral dumbfounding.
Most succinctly:
Humans can justify almost anything by calling it natural.
Naturalness is the pervasive myth—the one to root out of your head.