re: #837 Irenike

But the original argument, from an evolutionary standpoint, is that the specific traits either get selected for or not. In the case of sickle cell, we can clearly see what the survival advantage is for having one, but not both genes. And then, when the environment changes, according to evolutionary theory, the original survival advantage may or may not need to be selected for anymore. When it is not needed, the trait dies out.

What is interesting to me about homosexuality is that there is a distinct survival disadvantage —-strictly from an evolutionary standpoint, let me stress —- since gay men are not going to have natural urges to impregnate as many females as possible. At the most, gay men will reproduce at a slower rate than ardently heterosexual men, assuming they are reproducing at all. Over time, over many thousands of years, you would think this would eventually go extinct, especially as social pressures to marry and have children abate among the gay community. Maybe the argument you’d want to make at this point, then, is that the small numbers of gay men compared to heterosexual men is due to the slower rate of reproduction in that population, as compared to the hetersexual population.

You miss the point entirely. If stress-produced differential hormonal bathing of the fetus during a critical period during gestation is indeed a cause of homosexuality, as the German studies indicate, the ENTIRE HUMAN RACE could have this propensity coded in its genes as an evolutionary adaptation to compensate for episodic environmental resource scarcity or danger, and it still would only become actuated in pregnant women under stress - a definite subset, not complete set, of pregnant women. This is why heterosexual parents can have homosexual children, and vice versa. The mode of transmission is only indirectly genetic; directly, it depends in changes in the fetal hormonal environment during a critical period in brain development.