Manny Pacquiao's Jabs at Gays—and Biological Fact

Now that he's won a ton of world championship boxing matches (eight, to be exact), Manny Pacquiao is now running for a seat in the Philippines senate, and in running for office he's stuck his foot in his mouth.

In a video on local TV5's election site, Pacquiao took the unprompted opportunity to denigrate gays and lesbians: "It's common sense. Do you see animals mating with the same sex? Animals are better because they can distinguish male from female. If men mate with men and women mate with women they are worse than animals."

Evidently the Philippines has some of the same problems with religious zealots that we have on this side of the International Date Line. In that idiotic quip, Pacquaio runs afoul of queer humans--and also biologists.

First, humans are animals. Second, plenty of animals exhibit same-sex sexual activity. Like a lot. Some of them are even found in the Philippines! Here's a truncated list of animals that exhibit homosexual behavior: bison, bear, rat, cavy, caribou, cat, cattle, chimpanzee, dolphin, marmoset, dog, elephant, fox, giraffe, goat, horse, human, koala, lion, orca, raccoon. That's just mammals, BTW. There are ducks and lizards and insects and salmon and snakes and salamaders and jumping spiders that do it with same-sex species mates. As far back as 1999, about 500 species have been documented as doing it.

Pacquiao attempted an apology shortly afterward on Instagram writing: "I'm sorry for hurting people by comparing homosexuals to animals. Please forgive me for those I've hurt. I still stand on my belief that I'm against same sex marriage because of what the Bible says, but I'm not condemning LGBT."

Incidentally, he has done this before. Pacquiao is already in politics, and currently represents the province of Sarangani in the House of Representatives, even though he is often missing. He's fond of quoting from bible passages, and recently did so in an attempt to prevent a proposal to give free condoms to the poor.