People are very complex organisms and we define man and woman at our convenience. When you say female do you think of a 40 lb midget ,a 5 ft 2 blond ,a 6 ft 6 basketball player. The range of male and female is large . I dont think anyone CHOOSES to be gay.To decide to be beaten up, to get discriminated against. To deny yourself one of an animals most powerful drives,to reproduce,. You are born that way.Its not an aberration but just a statistical probabilityh when given the complexity of mammals.;
I just don’t buy the “helps raise the straight dude’s kids” theory. For one thing, the incidence of homosexuality is pretty low, and a typical hunter-gatherer band might have 1 gay person-- or none. Besides, we have tons of data on humans living in primitive social groups, and who has ever documented gay tribe members helping raise their straight siblings kids? Child rearing is often a communal activity, shared by extended families.
Let’s think about it though. Humans are unique with our big brains. Human females are fertile all year long. A healthy female can pump out a pup every nine or ten months, but those pups still have a lengthy development phase. We’re practically marsupials. We give birth, then we gotta feed, protect, clothe & socialize those little monsters for at least two or three years. What’s a human female supposed to do if she’s got one kid suckling, and two toddlers? Child rearing would definitely be a communal activity, but if every single sexually mature adult is busy having his or her own kids, who’s gonna help female number one with her three kids?
As for documenting gay tribe members raising their straight siblings’ kids, I offer you my own anecdotal evidence about a Samoan friend of mine. He’s gay. He’s got a lesbian sister. But in Samoan culture it’s mostly considered fa’afafine, and it can be quite a bit more complex than just gay, straight or transgender, yet in their society it’s treated quite simply.
Neither have kids of their own, but their brothers & sisters keep pumping them out. Older brother has three kids, got shipped off to Iraq, and mom took off. Guess who’s raising older brother’s kids? Gay younger brother & lesbian sister. Passing kids around for raising purposes is actually quite common in Samoan culture.
Any relative would help. And most nomadic hunter/gatherer societies consist only of related individuals.
But I think the last sentence here is your answer:
Yes, it’s quite common, and has nothing to do with being gay. (Besides, Samoans don’t now nor did they recently live in a primitive hunter/gatherer society, so they don’t represent a good model of early Homo sapien social life, where this “gay gene” would presumably have evolved.)
Ok so maybe this has been answered, but what exactly causes someone to be born gay? Is it random? I can see that there can be some basic benefits in a “tribe” type atmosphere that can better the society in a whole. What at an evolutionary stand point though? If your father is gay or mother, is there more likely a chance that you’d be born gay over someone whos line can’t be traced back to other homosexuals? I would think not, but I’m not sure, I haven’t seen any studies to that effect. I’m also willing to believe that just because you say that just because you are raised by two gay parents you as well won’t nessessarly turn out gay yourself. So then in the year 2006 what are the benefits to being born gay?
That study with the rats kind of sound interesting to decrease over population, but wouldn’t there be more people being born gay then? And who says exactly that we are overpopulated? Is there more gay people born in cities like New York or does it just seem that way because more people are reproducing?
I can’t prove it has anything to do with being gay, but being gay, both the sister & brother are childless, and thus available to raise siblings’ kids. If brother & sister were straight, knowing this family, I’d say there’s a 100% probability they’d be busy with their own kids, and less able to care for others.
I don’t know what you mean by “recent,” but they were hunter/gatherer until at least the mid 1800’s. I don’t currently believe in a “gay gene” and I’m not arguing for its evolution. Saying there’s a “gay gene” is like saying there’s a “human gene.” There ain’t.
An inherited trait doesn’t have to be beneficial to persist in a population- it just needs to not be too detrimental. Evolution makes something good enough to get by- it’s not big on optimization.
Actually, the person who originated the “helps raise the straight dude’s kids” theory is sociobiologist E.O. Wilson. As for documentation, much of the documentation we have on hunter/gatherer societies before they were introduced to Christianity comes from the 19th & early 20th centuries. Back then anthropologists were extremely reluctant to document any kind of same-sex relationships since that would put the society in a “bad light.” An example comes to mind (can’t find the cite, read it a decade or so ago) that talked about the Hawai’ian concept of aikane
relationships between Hawai’ian men. Paraphrasing, the writer, who spent a great deal of time among the Hawaiians in the late 1800 says “the concept of ‘aikane’ being a perversion is a horrible rumor and a sick one. The aikane was a close friend, nothing more.” Much of that attitude prevailed in early anthropolgic writings, so it is hard to state for a fact whether or not Wilson’s hypothesis is true.
Thought of a good example of this. There is no advantage for a modern human to be born with an appendix- in fact, there’s a slight disadvantage, in that it’s possible to get appendicitis and die (this was more likely before modern medicine, of course). Some humans are born without an appendix, but most have one, despite it having no known advantages and at least one known disadvantage.
I don’t mean to come off sounding rude, but asking about the evolutionary benefits of a human trait in 2006 is meaningless. We’re in complete control of our own reproduction. If we wanted to, we could collect 100 million gays & lesbians, form our own colony somewhere and artificially breed ourselves into perpetuity.
So maybe the bigger question is, why do so many people have such a negative emotional response to something that has no effect on them? Is religion really to blame, or is religion just a smoke screen for a primal revulsion that some people just can’t control? Consider that the People of Wyoming actually did decide that Matthew Shepard’s homosexuality was benign, and the depravity was Russell Henderson’s and Aaron McKinney’s revulsion to Matthew.
Is there such thing as a “compulsory preference” – that is, I am compelled by something I don’t understand to prefer sex with women to sex with men? If so, and if homosexuality is that, then wouldn’t the abhorrence of someone’s preference be the real illness? I mean, there are people who are fascinated by rattlesnakes, but I’m so repulsed by them that the sight of a real one makes me physically ill. I’d love nothing more than a world free of rattlesnakes (bull snakes eat lots of mice, too, and I don’t mind them, so don’t everybody go all eco-Nazi on me!) But that’s my phobia, and I recognize it as a real but fairly harmless dysfunction on my part. But homophobia causes real harm in the world. So, shouldn’t we be studying homophobia instead of homosexuality?
Sorry, I guess I came pretty close to hijacking the thread – didn’t mean to.
Heck, I made a conscious decision not to reproduce. I must be crazy,
I have enormous respect for Wilson, and I think the point about homosexuality being misreported (or ignored) by early anthropologists is a good one. I just don’t think that the “helps raise the stratight dude’s kids” is the best explanation for the data we do have.
How about male sexual bonding? You’re a fertile male who wants to increase you’re standing within the tribe hierarchy. You want to gather a group of available males to your side. Most of the males are busy making kids and forming their own bands. But there’s gay Thog. He’s a good guy. I’ll pick him for my team. Maybe have a little sex with him, just to cement things.
I went to graduate school in the behavioral neuroscience of sexual differentiation. I will be the first to say that no one really knows what triggers homosexuality but there are some strong pointers.
I get annoyed when people use genetic and biological interchangeably when talking about conditions. The two are not synonymous and while genes tend to trigger bi9ological processes, they are not the whole thing.
The vast majority of sexual differentiation is caused by hormones. Genes mainly just cause the body to develop the appropriate sex gonads but it is the hormones that produce that actually cause sexual differentiation in the body and brain. Without the influence of sex hormones, everyone would develop as a female. This happens in real life when genetic males lack the receptors for their own hormones and develop as female. There are other naturally occurring conditions like pseudohermaphroditism that can shed light on these influences.
This is just a story about exposure or lack of exposure to certain hormones during development. It is also about their timing. Both the body and brain go through many developmental stages where the body and brain develop one way if certain hormones are present and the other if the case is different. Some of these critical periods can be brief and they tend to be permanent.
It has been know since the 1970’s that you can alter sexual behaviors and preferences in animals with hormone treatments both pre and post-natal. There have been hundreds of these experiments mainly in rats but also in others. I have done some myself.
The way the evidence leans is that the brain’s sexual center, the hypothalamus, is different between homosexual and heterosexual men. The likely explanation for that is that regions in their hypothalamus did not respond normally to a critical hormone period and developed in the female pattern. This is still somewhat controversial but it is the explanation that makes the most sense scientifically. There have been some high-profile studies that found results consistent with this view but people debate this issue especially hard.
Why does it happen? If my explanation holds out, it would just be a mistake that tends to pop up fairly frequently. The critical period for that trait may be fragile. There doesn’t even need to be any genes involved either although I suppose there could be. Calling it a mental illness is really a judgement call and that doesn’t usually apply to things that don’t inhibit normal function. Maybe it just is. Why are people left-handed?
A popular theory amongst scientists is minor, undetectable brain damage, most likely from O2 depravation during birth. I find it vaguely insulting, but my own difficult birth does support the theory.
OTOH, two lefties- like my parents - have a 40% chance of having a left-handed child. If the brain damage thing is true, does it mean lefties are more likely to have difficult deliveries which would then in turn subject nearly half of their offspring to this minor brain damage too?
No hijack at all, jeffrice, you’ve gone right to the heart of the issue. I think you’re exactly right. 
*We all gasp this can’t happen here
We’re all much too civilized
Where can these monsters hide
But they are knocking on our front door
They’re rocking in our cradles
They’re preaching in our churches
And eating at our tables
I search my soul
My heart and in my mind
To try and find forgiveness
This is someone’s child
With pain unreconciled
Filled up with father’s hate
Mother’s neglect
I can forgive
But I will not forget*
—from “Scarecrow,” a protest song by Melissa Etheridge about the murder of Matthew Shepard.
Sounds good, levdrakon.
How about female sexual bonding? You’re a fertile woman who wants to increase your standing within the circle of women. You want to have a bunch of sympathetic sisters on your side. Most of the women are busy carrying, birthing, feeding, changing, watching, raising kids and forming their own sisterhoods. But there’s lesbian Loana. She’s a good gal. I’ll pick her for my sisterhood. Maybe have a little sex with her, just to cement things.
I have done some myself, on a human (moi). Since I went on estrogen, I feel much calmer and more accepting of men around me. I hug and kiss men on the lips now, which I never would have done before I came out. Many straight men, as well as gay, accept me as a woman.
In the news recently was research on lesbian brains which corroborates this very hypothesis.
“Lesbians’ brains reacted somewhat, though not completely, like those of heterosexual men, a team of Swedish researchers said.” I like that—“somewhat, though not completely, alike.” A similar study on gay male brains, with similar results, had already been published.
Nah, I’m still not conviced. Interstingly, I was looking up something in a book by Frans de Waal* to support some statements in another thread, and I noticed that his hypothesis for the origins of homosexuality in humans is pretty much the same as the one I gave above**. I’m sticking with that one until we have some more data.
*a leading primatologist, specializing in bonobos
**that the genes controlling sexual attraction overlap with the genes controling more general “bonding”, and that sometimes they end up pushing us more in one way than the other. But the need for humans to form tight social bonds outways any decrease in reproductive success that a small percentage of homosexuals might confir on the population.
It’s not convincing to me either. To address comments made above, in most hunter-gatherer societies that I’ve heard of, mothers usually quite carefully space apart children so that a mother is not typically tasked with trying to care for three infants at a time. They do this through breastfeeding for longer than we do in the west (it inhibits fertility), abstinence, abortion, and infanticide. Assuming that gay people make up approximately the same portion of the population as they do in modern society, odds are slim most families would have a gay relative nearby to help out.
It would have to be a lot of help, too - an aunt or uncle only shares a quarter of their genes with a niece or nephew. Assuming that a gay person is significantly less likely to reproduce on their own (as the “gay uncle” hypothesis does), then being gay is a reproductive dead end. Giving up my chances to reproduce in order to help my close relatives raise their kids seems like a bad trade to me - the kids I’m helping out are only half as genetically similar to me as my own kids would be, which seems to suggest that my presence would have to make an enormous difference in their likelihood of surviving. I’m not sure how many children the average hunter-gatherer has that survive to reproductive age, but imagine that I would have otherwise had two kids. The gay uncle theory only works if I’m able to ensure that four more nieces and nephews survive to reproductive age than otherwise would have - otherwise, my genes are going to disappear from the gene pool. That’s hard to imagine. The genetic math just doesn’t work out, as far as I can see.
I’m inclined to lean more towards believing that being gay is the result of a tremendously complex set of genetic and environmental factors, and that human sexuality is enormously complicated. It’s a process that can easily be set out of whack. On a strictly biological basis, I think that I am an aberration; I think it’s a genetic hand that reduces my odds of reproducing and therefore renders me less evolutionarily fit. That doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I’m not inclined to value myself based upon my fitness in Darwinian terms, so pointing out that being gay is unlikely to be evolutionarily advantageous or neutral doesn’t upset me at all.
Well said. I think efforts to find an evolutionary advatange for homosexuality might be well meaning, but rather beside the point. Some people are homosexual-- that’s the way it is, and there probably isn’t just one explaination for it. From what we know (and as you said), this is the result of a complex set of circumstances only some of which are genetic. Traits don’t have to be advantageous in order to survive-- they just have to be “not very disadvantageous”, if you will.