Why Gays Are Essential to the Balance of Nature

Very fascinating, thanks! I never really thought about it this way.

 

Science, you magnificent thing you.

 

does that mean that maybe it's a heterosexual gene that gets turned off for homosexual people? because if removing a gene removes heterosexuality... maybe instead of trying to find what causes homosexuality, we should be looking to see what causes heterosexuality?

I'm not good with science, so forgive me if it's a stupid question. I'm still reading, it'll take me a few times to really "get it" if I ever "get it", lol. but interesting read, for sure.

 

"...the religions born of past millennia that can't expand to encompass contemporary knowledge about the world don't provide the kind of self-purpose that progressive minded gays and lesbians require. Science and nature, on the other hand, can. Specifically the science and nature of population control, which makes homosexuality essential to the balance of life."

My sentiments entirely.

 

I think the author is confusing homosexuality with homosexual behaviour.

There is no proof that there is any variance the the incidence of homosexuality between generations, however due to social pressures (ie religion), biologic necessity (underpopulation) or self imposed pressure, many persons who are themselves homosexual engage in heterosexual relationships and procreation. They are still gay.

I think the point he is trying to get across is that as the need for procreation decreases (an abundance of mates, ie overpopulation), the less likely it is for homosexuals to engage in heterosexual relations. But to attribute this to the switching on or off of a gene is pretty absurd. There may well be a gay gene, but I don't buy that it switches on more often during overpopulation scenarios.

I may be grossly misreading this guy (who isn't a scientist BTW), but I think this piece is more patting himself on the back than science.

 

Honestly, I agree. I think the author is confusing these two things too. And the article itself seems comparatively unaware that gay people might engage in heterosexual acts for a variety of socially-imposed reasons. It's not all biology (even if lots of it is - obviously it's not a choice, but that doesn't mean we're robots).

Also, am I the only one who finds it kind of weird that this view turns us into biological machines created to curb excesses of production? That we're some kind of fortunate or intended "mistake" to keep from making more people than we need? I'm not saying that necessarily makes it not true, I just wonder if this is another part of the "biology isn't the only explanation for everything" problem.

I've read similar theories that explain the existence of homosexuality as forms of population preservation (as opposed to curbing population production in the first place) - that homosexual couples in animal populations seem to exist to take over parenting duties for infants or young whose parents are lost or killed. I kind of like that idea more, though even there it feels kind of weird to exist for the sole purpose of "backing up" the biological aims and aspirations of hetero members of the species.

Overall I think I tend to be uncomfortable with biological "explorations" or "explanations" of homosexuality. They all tend to think of gay people in terms of what they can do for hetero people, and when they start talking about identifying a "gay gene" or something, I always wonder, how long until someone starts looking for, or finds, a way to turn that gene off prior to birth?

 

I'm really wary of such attempts to "biologize" human behaviour without backing it up with actual scientific rigour of controlled experiments, careful observation and constant challenge of the obvious.

Yes, it's very comforting to "know" that you have a place in the big scheme of things, and that maybe your place is somehow special and privileged, but that's not science, that's mythology. Nothing wrong with various explanatory myths as such, but indulging in mythological thinking while pretending it's "science" can be dangerous to both science and society. That's basically what was wrong with eugenics, - It subverted science and put its authority behind the tales of well-off WASPs about how wonderful they are and how anyone not like them is merely having their just desserts, - things that they really wanted to hear, instead of the truth.

And a technical point:

Unsurprisingly, since that's not what projects like HGP are all about. We can tell if a certain sequence of DNA looks like it might be a gene, but we are far, very far from being able to just tell from that sequence what exactly (if anything) that gene does. We may make a pretty accurate guess at what kind of protein it would produce, but that's about it. We won't know when and where this gene is expressed, we don't really know what exactly this protein does, what kinds of mutations there are in the wider population (since whole-genome sequencing projects usually only sequence material from a handful of donor organisms) etc, without a lot of follow-up study. Sequences like one produced by HGP are sort of like someone giving you a recipe, a shopping list and enough cash, - sure, it enables you to make a dinner more easily, but there's still lots of actual shopping and actual cooking to do before you can eat it.

 

wow a good read! thanks

 

I'm not really buying it, myself. Sure, he makes a good point for accepting gay people. And obviously, being gay is not going to increase overpopulation.

But... the science behind it looks shoddy.
First of all, because nature really has no direction. Genes don't mutate in order to overcome some problem. They just mutate by themselves, and if a problem comes up, then populations that are lucky enough to have some possible adaptation survive, and others dwindle, increasing the proportion of the adaptation in the total species population.

But OK, let's overlook that for a minute as unfortunate semantics.
Even then, I don't think we can really claim gay genes have ever been selected for. To demonstrate that, we'd have to find evidence that there were societies who had a higher incidence of heterosexuals and destroyed themselves, while other societies, with a higher incidence of homosexuals, survived similar stresses (thereby spreading their tendency to produce higher numbers of homosexuals).
And, to the best of my history and anthropology knowledge... we really don't have any data to support that. Sure, there's civilizations that self-destructed, but never, to my knowledge, ones that escaped overpopulation, especially not ones that escaped it by lower reproduction. If they escaped overpopulation, it was usually through the much more efficient way of genociding other populations and stealing their lands.

It might be that it was inherited from our pre-human ancestors, of course. Or that there isn't a big selection effect, but a very subtle one, extending backwards for millions of years. But so far, we don't yet have any good indication for that.

So I do think it's an interesting hypothesis. But I'll hold off on calling it an explanation (let alone claiming gay people have a beneficial effect on society) until we have more evidence.

 

The article is going to be irrelevant in a century when same-sex reproduction becomes fully viable.

---------- Post added 27th Mar 2012 at 09:56 AM ----------

Same Sex Reproduction Using iPS Cells - YouTube

 

And even if that weren't an issue, apparently in 5 million years the y chromosome will disappear.

[YOUTUBE]ztc-JPzSefs[/YOUTUBE]
It's at the end