From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: Homosexuality & Evolution
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology,talk.origins
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 13 Sep 92 23:30:47 GMT

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.

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.

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.


Newsgroups: sci.anthropology