Sorry Shodan, but you have it backwards. Homosexuality is present in populations both man and animal. Just a fact. Comparing it cancer is no more sensible than comparing it to breastfeeding, and calling it a mistake is a revealing subjective opinion, not science. I agree that there needs to be more evidence before we can run around crediting babysitting as the explanation: there are too many equally plausible alternatives. But there’s little ground to call anything in the human gene pool an “abberration” unless in a strictly statistical sense, whereby redheadedness if just as abberant as homosexuality.
Shodan reads this. Then he points to post #35 and shakes his head pityingly.
You mean like hemophilia and Tay-Sachs disease?
Well, if you say so.
Actually, I imagine it to be more like Down’s syndrome - a persistent, because common, genetic mistake.
Regards,
Shodan
So, in summary, your response to Diogenes learned and reasoned interpretation of the passage boils down to, “Is not!”
Well, I’m convinced.
That doesn’t make sense since we know the specific genetic mechanism involved in Down’s Syndrome, but we know next to nothing about the genetic mechanism involved in sexual orientation. (Unless you mean “imagine” in the sense of making something up out of thin air.)
Yes. You aren’t appropriately separating subjective judgements from fact. Hemophilia and Tay-Sachs are no more or less objectively abberrant than any other trait, rare or common. Subjectively, they cause all sorts of horrible results, and we all agree that these results are bad and we dont’ want. Subjectively, I don’t think homosexuality does have bad results at all. I don’t see any reason to search for a cure for homosexuality like I do for Tay Sachs. If you do, so much the worse for you.
Okay, just as long as you hold the same view of immunity to LDH cholesterol: a persistent genetic “mistake” (i.e. the result of a copying error in DNA). Anything more, and you are again equivocating the science in order to sneak your own opinion in without having to defend it.
:smack: There’s what I get for relying on my faulty memory! Zaccheus is who I was thinking of.
Thanks to you and **the raindog ** for your take on my post. You both said what I meant better than I did!
Well, we don’t even know for sure that homosexuality is caused by genetic mutation. But if it is, then it is reasonable to speculate about what factors might exist that offset the fairly obvious fact that same-gender sex cannot produce offspring.
Maybe there are offsetting factors. But no one has ever produced any evidence to demonstrate them. I have heard about the lesbian seagulls. But nothing about how they are disproportionately involved in rearing related offspring, or that they provide an advantage in reducing population pressure, or any of the rest of the claims. Just an announcement that homosexual behavior is occasionally found in the wild. So what does that establish?
That it’s “natural”? So, as I have said, is cancer and Down’s syndrome.
That social strictures against it are wrong? That doesn’t follow - it is possible that taboos against it and social pressure to marry and reproduce even if you are homosexual prevents evolutionary pressure (if any) from appearing.
Don’t know anything this specifically, but there are all kinds of common errors in DNA/RNA copying, and some are more common than others. But these kinds of errors are brought about by common mistakes, not necessarily inheritance.
Regards,
Shodan
I agree. But given how little we know about the day-to-day lives of our remote ancestors, speculation would remain mostly an untestable hypothesis. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t speculate, but that it won’t prove anything either way.
Interesting observations, but can you state what point you’re trying to make? Comparing homosexuality to cancer sure looks like a way to denegrate not only the behavior, but the people themselves. Why not compare it to mathematical geniuses or people who are double jointed?
It’s highly unlikely that we will ever be able to demonstrate offsetting factors for behaviors outside the norm, so pointing that out is not really meaningful in any way. Some people seem to have an innate attraction to the same sex. As far as we know, that’s a fact. Why that happens is a mystery, but so what? Almost all of human behavior is a mystery.
Sure, but shouldn’t modern, non-human populations be subject to the same sorts of evolutionary pressure as our ancestors? Which was part of my point about the lesbian sea gulls.
Because, on the face of it, being double-jointed or mathematically gifted does not have any obvious evolutionary draw-backs. Homosexuality does, in that it inherently cannot produce viable offspring.
Well, no. It is pretty easy to come up with an evolutionary explanation for heterosexual attraction - it pushes people to propagate the species. Homosexual attraction doesn’t. Yet it occurs.
Why is that? Maybe it is merely a commonly occuring mutation. Maybe it has nothing to do with genetics. Maybe it is something no one ever thought of. But in any case, it doesn’t strike me as any less interesting a question than anything else in evolutionary biology.
YMMV.
Regards,
Shodan
Fine, but we’re not birds, and we don’t behave much like birds in other circumstances, so I don’t see them as a good model for human behavior.
Depends. if you’re a nerdy math guy, you don’t get the girl-- the captain of the footbal team does (in a general sense). Besides, homosexuality doesn’t “inherently” prevent someone from producing offspring (viable or otherwise).
But if you think about it, if homosexuality were entirely genetic, then it would probably decline in liberal societies where gay couples are accepted, and increase (or at least not decline as much) in repressive societies that force sexual conformity.
I agree that it’s a fascination area of evolutionary biology. For an interesting discussion go to GQ, and you’ll find an active thread on that subject right now.
Actually, since bird behavior isn’t affected nearly as much by culture as is human behavior, if you want to study the possible genetic component of homosexuality, they are a reasonable model.
Well - yes, it does, if you have the choice between heterosex and homosex, and you choose homosex, you aren’t going to produce any offspring. Which, all other things being equal, is an evolutionary drawback.
Yes, you can be pressured (if you are human) to “close your eyes and think of England”, even if you are homosexual. But, absent such pressure, it seems almost axiomatic that homosexuals won’t be as successful at reproduction.
Heather doesn’t really have two mommies, biologically speaking.
Possibly, but it would take a long time for this to show up. And I don’t know anyone silly enough to propose that homosexuality is entirely genetic in origin. It is possible that there is some genetic influence, which reduces the question of how it might survive without removing it altogether.
I’ll have to have a look.
Regards,
Shodan
Not really. Sex acts are a choice. There’s no reason to believe that homosexuality makes somone not desire children. This desire can cause them to choose to take measures to have children regardless of their sexual desire, whether it’s a gay man and a lesbian choosing natural conception in the past or artificial insimination in the modern age. Being homo doesn’t make heterosex acts impossible.
Perhaps, but the fact still remains that gays are on average far, far less likely than straights to father or give birth to a child. As Shodan points out, this is pretty much axiomatic. Turning from genetics to culture, a culture that tolerates too many non-breeders (gay or straight) may be seriously handicapping itself in competition with other cultures, since a culture must successfully transmit itself across generations to survive. So on a cultural level, there may be strong evolutionary pressures not to give full acceptance to homosexuality. (Although as I pointed out earlier in the thread, prohibitions which are too strict may be counterproductive in terms of cultural survival as well.)
Even in ancient Greece, men were still expected to marry women and have children.
Not impossible, just less likely, given their inclination. It seems pretty obvious that social pressure has overridden the preferences of gay people thru out most of human history,as I have mentioned a time or two.
Which no doubt explains much of the apparent persistence of the gay gene, if any. The very most that you can say to date is that it is possible that there might be a genetic influence on sexual orientation, along with a bunch of other factors. If that influence is overruled by social pressure to the point that it doesn’t affect the reproductive success of those carrying the gene or genes, then no evolutionary selection against that gene exists.
Regards,
Shodan
What is “too many?” If 10% of individuals have exclusively homosexual orientations then 90% of the population is still reproducing and it’s still theoretically possible that a certain number of homosexual can be culturally beneficial. There has certainly never been any showing that homosexuals impede the reproductive rates of a given population (and Shodan’s assertion that homosexuality somehow affects “fertility” remains uncited).
Are you saying that if it is okay to be gay in a society that there will be enough people that will spontaniously become gay that it will affect the birth rate significantly? :dubious:
I know that isn’t what you are probably saying, just wanted to get that cleared up.
Hey Shodan? You’ve officially left the realm of objective discussion, and entered the realm of repeatedly comparing homosexuality to cancer. Congrats. Have fun with that.
No, you (checks forum, stops mid-sentence) need to consider that the only comparison Shodan made was to point out that the “homosexuality is natural” argument can be rebutted by “so is cancer” - that is, merely trumpeting the word “natural” as though it answered all criticism does not advance the argument.
The flip side of that coin is that “unnatural” includes gasoline, computers, sythentic materials of all kinds and clothing.
The natural aspect is almost always used as a counter-argument to the assertion that discrimination is okay because homosexuality is unnatural. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it offered as an argument in of itself.
Oh, I’ve much less quarrel with that than you might possibly think, Homebrew. It’s just I get all hot under the collar when I see someone scream “He just equated homosexuality with cancer! Blasphemy!” and reaching for a rock. And I don’t believe anyone was giving discrimination the okay in this thread.