In the interest of clarity, please be sure to not conflate the concepts of "normality," "naturalness" and "aesthetically or morally pleasing." Shaun, you've been particularly guilty of this."Normal" simply means the modal tendency of a variable phenomenon. It's a statistical term only. For instance, the modal tendency of healthy humans is to have two legs. It is "normal" for healthy humans to have two legs. The "normal" income of Americans is the modal tendency of income, the one you'd expect to hear most frequently if you asked a significant sample of American people and got honest replies. In the last US presidential election, it was "normal" to vote for Clinton, simply because it was, statistically speaking, the most common type in the variable population of votes cast. Normal simply means most frequently encountered type; only, period, damn it! The word has NO moral, ethical, spiritual, or religious connotations whatsoever, it is simply a statistical measure of the frequency of a phenomenon or of a trait in a variable population.
"Natural" refers to a phenomenon (object and or event) that exists in nature and can be observed and measured. This is not a statistical term, but a term refering to empirical evidence. Plutonium, New York City, Dolphins, and even hippies exist "in nature" and are therefore "natural." I don't personally care for many of the things that exist in nature, but that does not make those things "unnatural" at all. I can't stand brussels sprouts, for example, but my opinion of them hardly interferes with whether or not they exist as empirical, measurable phenomena.
Homosexual behavior is "natural" in that it can be empirically observed. It is not "normal" in the statistical sense, simply because it is rare, compared to heterosexuality. Red hair is also not normal, nor is it normal to be named Shaun, and historically speaking, symphonic music is not normal either. These observations have no bearing on whether or not red hair, Beethoven's 9th, or Shaun are decent, acceptable, or valuable phenomena.
All value judgements come down to personal opinion, and aesthetic evaluations of phenomena are not amenable to empirical evaluation. They can potentially be discussed from a statistical perspective (e.g. the modal tendency of clever folks is to prefer Beethoven to the Spice Girls) but when doing so , we have to keep in mind that modal tendencies do not refer to value. Things with very little value, or even negative value, are quite common (e.g. it is "normal" for the state to tax the citizen, since nearly all states do so).
So, in order to clarify this discussion, please use "normal" only to refer to modal tendencies, and use "natural" only to refer to empirically observed or observable evidence. If you want to talk about your personal preferences, for or against meat, sexual activity, hair color, Beethoven, whatever, fine, but PLEASE phrase your subjective opinions so that we, your readers, know that you are talking about your opinions and not trying to refer to objective, external phenomena or statistical measures thereof. Thank you.
-Floyd
