I have little doubt that Gays are born, not made (a genetic/chromosomal trait at the moment of conception, or some pre-natal development involving hormones).
Nature progresses with random mutations, with successful mutations passed down to suceeding generations. (This according to Darwin).
Since the (uncommon) offspring of gays and lesbians are generally straight (the probability remains…heteros outnumber gays),homosexuality does not seem to be hereditary. So what is the natural selection advantage to homosexuality…that is, what good does a same-sex relationship give to the individual, and to the species as a whole?
I mean, its like left-handedness. You have the majority which uses the right hand, and a few using the left hand.
Its just a mundane difference (unless you’re using scissors).
Lefties can still manupulate their environment with little diffuculty and can interact with righties…so I guess there isnt any real evolutionary advantage there.
Is this the same way with homosexuals? I mean, do gays have something nature gave them to be advantaged, like empathy and compassion, or is it just another mundane difference?
Remember that there is a tendency to anthropomorphize such things as society and natural selection. Natural selection doesn’t really know what it’s doing. In fact, it isn’t doing anything at all. Those who can adapt survive. Most homosexuals can adapt.
Not every trait we show has been selected for. Inheritable traits can survive so long as they are not selected against.
If there is a heritable component to human homosexuality, it is most probably just the extreme expression of a generalized trait.
Also remember, any exclusive homosexual (who by definition has removed himself from the reproductive pool) usually has siblings who are more willing to pass on the family gene map.
Also, our species has (relatively) some difficulty producing offspring and (relatively) extreme difficulty raising those offspring to adulthood. I’m thinking of this in a historical context here: today, most infants survive, but go back a couple of hundred years and see how high child mortality was. Even today, producing a baby and providing for it until maturity is very, very difficult. Shoot; just watch a toddler play for a few hours and you’ll wonder how any of us managed to survive to adulthood at all.
Compare people to mice, for example. Mice produce huge numbers of baby mice with relative ease; the “tactic” there is to produce so many offspring that even if most of them die, a few will survive. As soon as one litter is independent (and it doesn’t take long), mom mouse is pushing out another litter. Also, baby mice mature very rapidly: within a couple of months, they’re making baby mice of their own.
Humans babies gestate for a long time, yet we’re born “premature” because if we we gestated much longer, birth would kill both mother and child due to the unusually (and necessarily) large size of our heads. Because of our inherent prematurity, human babies require a tremendous amount of care and resources. Because successful adulthood depends on extensive survival teaching (we’re not creatures of instinct, but of learning- this is our one trait that allows us to survive), childhood lasts for several years, much longer than the childhoods of other mammals. The loss of a child is more dramatic, species-survival-wise, than a few litters of baby mice, because we invest much more in each individual child.
The child who has more adults contributing time, teaching, and resources has a significant advantage over the child who has few of these. A homosexual person who contributes to the survival of his nieces and nephews will see more of his/her genes survive than a person whose nieces, nephews, sons, and daughters die due to a lack of resources.
Yes, we’ve gone over this many times. Somehow people have a tough time figuring out how homosexuality could “survive” evolution, but no one ever asks why we still have diseases like Tay-Sachs and leukemia, sterility, or people who just don’t want to have children, all of which should have disappeared by now thanks to our good friend natural selection.
The simple answer is that traits do not disappear simply because they are not favored by natural selection. Traits which are neutral, only slightly selected against, or recessive can survive indefinitely. When you get to things that are determined by many genes, with a good mix of environmental conditions thrown in to boot, it gets even more complicated.
Well it wouldn’t actually happen of course. Like gay people exist some straight people would. However if the death rate was much lower then straight people would lower as well.
I welcome any corrections to my science here, but again, I see no reason to assume that any non-inheritable trait will provide an advantage to the individual that possesses it. That’s not the way natural selection works. An individual with a disadvantageous non-inheritable trait may be more likely to die without reproducing, but that won’t affect how common the trait is in the next generation because it can’t be passed from parent to child anyway. The trait is caused by something other than genes, so as long as that non-genetic cause (whatever it may be) is still around the trait will continue to manifest itself, whether it is advantageous or not.
Any study of the heritability of homosexuality would encounter the same obvious methodological problems that a study on the heritability of congenital sterility.
