It's in our genes?

[TumbledLove]

I've heard that people don't choose to be gay, but instead they're born that way. So from an evolutionary standpoint, is this the way that genes self-terminate? And doesn't this go against the general nature of life - to reproduce?

 

[glamorilla]

well i've got something in my pants...

 

[Cigan]

You know, I love Darwinism. Everyone accepts it as some sort of scientific law. It's not like gravity, or conservation of motion. It's a pattern that happened to establish itself after the dust settled from some very strange amino acid reactions millions upon millions of years ago. So it's basically a random pattern that was sort of a mistake. That means it has inconsistencies. Take for instance being pale skinned. Very unhealthy. You burn in the sun more easily, you are much more suceptible to skin cancer and so on. But wait, what is this. It's recessive. Suddenly it can hide in with the traits which lend themselves to survival and boom, we have a winner. Now look at the "gay gene" if it is a simple single gene which I somehow doubt. Families go for generations with no gay members, then boom. Someone's homosexual. The gene is probably not only recessive genetically, but we all know it's recessive socially. Who here can raise their hand and say they haven't at least met a gay man or woman who was in a striaght relationship till their thirties, and had kids before finally looking in the mirror and saying "why the hell am I doing this to myself?" And boom you have offspring with the "gay gene". Darwinism only establishes a tendency towards the survival of certain genes. It does not state that all the genes which still exist will be Darwinistically perfect. If they were we would all be gods and there would be no more evolution to happen. So don't worry about it. It all works out in the lab books.

 

[Cigan]

You know, I love Darwinism. Everyone accepts it as some sort of scientific law. It's not like gravity, or conservation of motion. It's a pattern that happened to establish itself after the dust settled from some very strange amino acid reactions millions upon millions of years ago. So it's basically a random pattern that was sort of a mistake. That means it has inconsistencies. Take for instance being pale skinned. Very unhealthy. You burn in the sun more easily, you are much more suceptible to skin cancer and so on. But wait, what is this. It's recessive. Suddenly it can hide in with the traits which lend themselves to survival and boom, we have a winner. Now look at the "gay gene" if it is a simple single gene which I somehow doubt. Families go for generations with no gay members, then boom. Someone's homosexual. The gene is probably not only recessive genetically, but we all know it's recessive socially. Who here can raise their hand and say they haven't at least met a gay man or woman who was in a striaght relationship till their thirties, and had kids before finally looking in the mirror and saying "why the hell am I doing this to myself?" And boom you have offspring with the "gay gene". Darwinism only establishes a tendency towards the survival of certain genes. It does not state that all the genes which still exist will be Darwinistically perfect. If they were we would all be gods and there would be no more evolution to happen. So don't worry about it. It all works out in the lab books.

 

[Queersetti]

Two points, I'd like to make here.

First, there is still no convincing evidence of a purely genetic origin of homosexuality. Other factors, such as in vitro development and early environmental imprinting may be as important as genetic makeup.

And, from an evolutionary standpoint, the perpetuation of the species, not the extension of any particular hereditary line within it, is the driving force. Reproductive strategies that reduce sheer numbers can be good for the species by reducing overpopulation and it's harmful effects. Recent studies show that there may be a correlation between overcrowding and declining sperm counts, for example. It is as valid to posit homosexuality as a species survival mechanism as it is to think it represents a genetic dead end.

 

[naudiz]

Pale skin is actually an evolutionary advantage for humans living in a cold areas north of the equator, where the sun's light doesn't hit the earth as directly as it does in savannah climates. UV radiation from the sun triggers the synthesis of Vitamin D in the body, and without it, diseases like Ricketts, at a time when medicine had no cure, were deadly. So pale skin was an important survival trait in paleolithic Europe.

Just a random factoid, because I'm an info-whore.

As for saying that sexuality is genetic, that's a slippery slope. Genetics isn't as easy as 'this is a recessive trait, this is a dominant one.' The way genes interact with each other is more complex than that, and there's more to it than simply what you've inherited in your DNA. Like Queersetti said, there's a lot that goes on in vitro. Environment has as much to do with it as genetics when a fetus is developing not only sex, but sexual identity.

One study I read awhile ago, and I wish I knew where to find it so I could reference it, implied that pregnant mothers under life-or-dead stress were more likely to give birth to homosexual babies if they were carrying boys. The theory was that, in times of life-or-death stress, when the population might be threatened, the natural response is to try to produce girls, because you can repopulate quickly if you have lots of females as opposed to lots of males in a population. So the 'hormone bath' a fetus develops in leaned heavily toward feminine traits. The study looked at surviving women of WWII in England, and the relatively high number of homosexual sons born after the country had the bejeezus bombed out of it.

I don't really buy that study, but it's interesting anyway. As for what the evolutionary advantage of homosexuality is, or how it could pass from generation to generation, well that's a good question. In straight-line genetics, it wouldn't make sense. Except that sexuality isn't determined by straight-line genetics. Again, you have those pesky bisexuals coming in and messing stuff up by having a greater chance of reproducing than someone who doesn't interact sexually at all with the opposite sex.

Also, who says homosexuals don't have children? I know plenty of gay people with kids. Either they came out late in life, or they wanted children, so they planned to have them. I can easily see one evolutionary advantage of homosexuality -- these people don't have kids by accident. If they have children, chances are good that the children were planned for and are wanted. These are kids who have a better chance of being cared for than kids who got here because the condom broke.

Of course, I have no scientific evidence to back this up, but it's an example of how you can take a situation and put a spin on it to back up your beliefs.

 

[Netzach]

I think the species will go on just as splendidly stupidly if 10 percent or so of it *might not* reproduce. Hell, I like cock and I have no maternal instinct at all and the thought of anyone I didn't invite taking up residence in my body smacks of sci fi to me.

Who knows, I know so many lesbians with biological clocks and me with none whatsoever. Welcome to the 21st century, have a Stephen J Gould on me.

 

[naudiz]

The times they are a'changin'.

I look forward to the day, and I would love to see it in my lifetime, where same-sex couples with children aren't anything to get excited about, and opposite-sex couples can choose to remain childless and not be treated as if they're mentally ill.

 

[BlueSugar]

One study I read awhile ago, and I wish I knew where to find it so I could reference it, implied that pregnant mothers under life-or-dead stress were more likely to give birth to homosexual babies if they were carrying boys. The theory was that, in times of life-or-death stress, when the population might be threatened, the natural response is to try to produce girls, because you can repopulate quickly if you have lots of females as opposed to lots of males in a population. So the 'hormone bath' a fetus develops in leaned heavily toward feminine traits. The study looked at surviving women of WWII in England, and the relatively high number of homosexual sons born after the country had the bejeezus bombed out of it.
.

Actually, it makes pleanty of sence. If they were pregnant, and the gender was already determined...then the women underewent the extreme stress the "hormone bath" would be a shit ton of estrogen thus giving more fem hormones.
But before the baby has developed and the gender was still to be determined everything going on within the body influenced the child's sex... from a little mass of cells we are all a product of 40% geneticlly influenced and %60 enviornmentally influenced
Everything that we are today... well... 40% of it has been predetermined by our genes.
(it wasn't 30/70 and its not 50/50... I remember it being 60/40 in a few studies in a class I took in Genetics and Human behavior...)

I think the gene/environment are incredable, espically when they did twin studies ... some of them are off the wall and definetly discountable... but not all of it is.

 

[naudiz]

I think it might be an explanation, but I also think that sexuality is too complex to be pinned down to a single source.

 

[Queersetti]

I think it might be an explanation, but I also think that sexuality is too complex to be pinned down to a single source.

I agree, I don't believe there is a single origin of human sexuality, I believe there are a number of factors that are all involved to varying degrees.

 

[infinityoverzero]

Natural selection and orientation

Looking back through the threads, this one caught my eye ...

One of my readings for a psych course on evolution uses homosexuality as an example. The perspective of the author is that in primitive hunter-gather societies, homosexuals often held positions of power (eg. shamans, medicine men, seers etc). Although the person wouldn't have any offspring who would benefit from this, his/her heterosexual relatives would do better in society. They would have some recessive homosexual genes, and these would be passed down to the offspring, who would be more likely to do well since their aunt / uncle was in a power position in society.

This scenario could be possible - kin selection theories such as these have been used to explain altruistic behaviour (doesn't directly benefit the person, but it benefits those who share some of their genes). I'm not sure if I agree with the whole evolutionary psychology idea in general (that social behaviour is the result of evolution), or that every trait and behaviour that we have today is around because it was adaptive at some time in our past. Also, I agree with the other posts that prenatal environment, early experiences, culture etc do have some influence - it's been long agreed that both nature and nurture contribute to some degree for everything.

Just my two bits on the idea.

 

[Cigan]

Also, who says homosexuals don't have children? I know plenty of gay people with kids. Either they came out late in life, or they wanted children, so they planned to have them. I can easily see one evolutionary advantage of homosexuality

The other thing you have to consider is the relatively unusual way our culture treates homosexuality. And I'm not just talking about the heteros here. I'm talking about us too. Modern western civilization is one of the first cultures where "being homosexual" is even an understood concept. In mideval Japan men having relations with men was completely acceptable. Thing was those men were either monks or also had a wife and probably children. In previous less populated societies with high mortality rates homosexuals differentiated between the responsibility of having children and the recreation of following their own sexual instincts. In modern society we don't have the low populations and high mortality rates which created this problem in the past. So the evolutionary question gets muddied. Until recently there weren't any real factors inhibiting the genes. It's only in a modern society that you could make the argument that the genes should self terminate, and even now bi sexuals and the homosexuals who do reproduce prevent that, even if homosexual inheritence is that simple (which I doubt)

 

[simonedb27]

It seems that everyone has their own theory of this and so do i.

I think that there might be some genetic comibnation of several alleles that would lend themselves to a homosexual orientation in the individiual. I also think that these genes would need to be activated by either exposure to inappropriate hormone concentrations in the womb due to maternal stress, etc. and/or environmental exposures after birth.

I believe that some day we will find that all personality traits can be traced through each experience and eventually back to a genetic combination of traits. I just don't think we are smart enough to figure it out yet.