I was just looking at Benson's Story (link below) at something relevant to another post I was replying to, and immediatley following that part in the story is something directly relevant to your question. Permit me to quote from Benson's Story, chapter 7 (*plug*), one of the many fine things to be found in the GL Garden:
Benson sighed and continued, "There is a section of the brain, in the hypothalamus, which functionally relates perceptions of certain properties in objects in one's environment with sexual arousal. It is typically organized to key in on such things as skin texture, amount of body hair, the size, form, and build of the body, voice tone, ways of movement and the like. A homosexual is a person whose brain is set up so that features of members of the same sex are functionally associated with sexual arousal. Mark's brain, for instance, somehow became organized in such a way that he responded with sexual interest to people who had the physical and behavioral attributes typically found in males.
"Certainly, Laura, nature would move towards a system in which most males would respond with sexual interest to features of a female, while females responded with sexual interest to relevant features of a male. But in doing so nature made it possible for the brains of some males to respond positively to the features of other males, and for some females to respond to the features of other females. ..."
(If you're interested in reading it, here are links to it: secure link normal link.)
Anyway, just in case the relevance is not obvious, and in case you don't read the rest of the story where the relevance is made even more plain, I'll say this. Nature very frequently shows a "bell curve" in the distribution of whatever is being measured, and it is just as "natural" (a part of Nature) for something to be at one end of the bell curve as it is to be at the other end, or in the middle. If it is possible for human brains to become 'wired up' to be attracted to children (and it is obviously possible, since it happens), then it is natural for it to happen. It is also conceivable that there is an evolutionary advantage to having an adult whose focus is on caring for and protecting someone not his own child rather than on reproducing directly. Consider the ant: the vast majority of them have no offspring at all, being sterile. And this is Nature, and therefore natural.
- Minstrel -