Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Homosexuality & Evolution
From: sbishop@desire.wright.edu
Date: 13 Sep 92 22:16:17 EST
 <1992Sep2.131416.24901@medtron.medtronic.com> <BuB3J5.78C@agora.rain.com> <2AB3CF27.26305@news.service.uci.edu>
Organization: Wright State University 

In article <2AB3CF27.26305@news.service.uci.edu>, cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
> In article <BuB3J5.78C@agora.rain.com> trifid@agora.rain.com (Roadster Racewerks) writes:
>>
>>I think common sense shows one possible biological "rationale" for the
>>appearance of homosexual behavior among a species: overpopulation.
> 
> This then doesn't explain why there is and has been in the past
> homosexual behavior among peoples who didn't have to worry about
> overpopulation.
> 
> When you're dealing with such a culturally loaded subject, you have to
> make sure you aren't carrying that baggage over to other cultures.  Sex
> and the taboos that surround it have become so culturally loaded and
> been treated in such varied ways by most cultures that approaching a
> "biological" explanation for anything other than inserting a penis into
> a vagina puts you on fairly thin ice. 
>  
>>In fact, didn't the recent experiment{ with the huge, purposefully overpopulated
>>colony of lab mice tend to show an increase in same-sex behaviors as the
>>population density went up? Seems like a fairly good scheme for reducing the
>>population to me...
>>
>>Suze
> 
> This unfortunately, falls into the trap delineated by a previous poster
> -- that of considering sex behavior as being all one way or all the
> other.  If pursuit of orgasm is pleasurable (and I think we'll all agree
> to that), then it shouldn't matter who you get it from -- including
> yourself.  Homosexual behavior is also seen in animals without a high
> population density.  It is possible that the incidence of copulation in
> general rose, and homosexual coupling was simply more noteworthy to
> those performing the experiment.
> 

As a farmer's daughter, and observer of nature, it is quite common to see
pseudo-homosexual behavior in farm animals.  In fact, mounting of other
cows is behavior that indicates that a cow is in heat.  Just speculative,
but this may also be a pre-curser of 'real' homosexual behavior.

> The false assumption that homosexuality is anti-evolutionary is
> surprisingly tenacious, but no one seems to realize that having sex with
> a member of the same sex one night doesn't preclude having sex with a
> member of the opposite sex the next and thus reproducing.  If homosexual
> tendencies were anti-evolutionary, they would have EVOLVED OUT through
> leaving no offspring.  The fact that they are still here (as to whether
> or not they are genetically decided, no one knows, but I think a tiny
> portion may be due to genetic predisposition) demonstrates that it is
> not anti-evolutionary.  If it were, they would not even have survived
> the first reproductive cycle.
> 

Many studies of twins tends to lend weight to genetic predisposition, larger
percentage of siblings being homosexual when they are identical.....
 
> Again, we are falling into the trap of looking at it as a digital
> choice: homo or het.  I think a more accurate way to approach it would
> be to use a spectrum of sexual behavior with homosexual all the way at
> one end, heterosexual all the way at the other, and most people
> somewhere in between.  It could be 50-50 bisexual, or 90-10 in favor of
> one sex.
> 
> Also, I am suspicious of conclusions drawn about sexual behavior unless 
> the person drawing them has at least a cursory familiarity with the
> sexual behaviors encouraged by religions and cultures for various
> reasons throughtout millenia.  I'm not saying that you are ignorant of
> these things, but just that your explanation seems a bit too facile.
> Before you make any judgements about why people are one way or the other
> predominantly, it is worthwhile to read up on myth and practices in as
> many different VERY OLD cultures as possible -- especially before
> religious developments that deemed sex evil and dirty.  These cultures in
> particular seem to have some really novel outlooks on sex -- and they
> were around for a REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY long time. 
> 
> Regards,
> Janis C.

Janis has made a very good point here.  The ancient Greeks had a cycle of
behaviour that went something like this, I think.  Youths formed homosexual
relationships with either each other or a much older man.  Then a little
later in life they married.  As older men they often returned to homosexual
behavior.  (Please, if I am incorrect on this, I request correction....)

Sue