My personal belief is that we're now living in the most homosexual time there will ever be. While evolution won't select for it, sexual divergence has been firmly repressed by society. Gays and similar have been all but forced to marry and procreate so as to appear normal. Now, they're not. This will lead to fewer of them becoming genetic parents, gradually removing the genetic predisposition from the gene pool. A century from now, I wouldn't be surprised if GBLATs comprised less than 1% of the population.
Before you make that prediction, do recall that many traits, whether or not they result in effective sterility, are constantly maintained in the population within recessive genes. There are many examples of genetic disorders continuing to exist despite the fact that they kill before the sufferer can reproduce.
More to the point, since homosexuality is most likely a complex combination of multiple genes and environmental factors, it can probably arise in a great number of ways. Most likely, there is no single "gay gene" to be bred out of a population, an event already fairly unlikely by the rules of inheritance.
Oh, and also - do you really mean to suggest that every gay or lesbian kid has a secretly homosexual parent? I assure you that this is patently untrue.
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I hide myself within my flower
That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
I agree for the most part, though I wouldn't commit myself to using the phrase "morally good". I'd prefer "not morally evil", to highlight the relevant portion of the notion that it has no moral bearing whatsoever.
Yeah, I vascillated there between neutrality and goodness as the proper descriptor not to bias for homosexuality but to express the notion that all being is good. Still, the inclusion of the word "morally" was silly on my part.
Open question: Does anyone besides this berserker here find anything especially objectionable or insincere about that post?
If anyone has earned the right to be spoken to politely, it's Mamelon. And I don't think she has ever missed the idea that someone is disagreeing with her just because the point was made delicately.
Diverging back to the point: if homosexuality has a genetic root, then it is a defect. People don't like to use the word because of the onus it carries, but that's what it means.
What you mean to say is
"if homosexuality has a genetic root, then it is a genetic defect that lowers the likelihood its host spawning."
Becuase you could likewise say
"if homosexuality has a psycholocial root, then it is a psychological defect that lowers the likelihood of its host spawning."
In that form, I don't disagree with either formulation. They make clear that the defectiveness is contingent on the imperative to spawn. No imperative to spawn, no defect.
(Lest any outraged gay Salvationer wish to debate that, may I remind you first that if being gay is not genetic, it must be psychological. You can settle for having a minor genetic defect, in which there is no shame, or admit that the nutters who "cure" gay kids at those camps are right.)
Wrong. And naughty reasoning as well. Tempting people to agree because the alternative would be scary.
Sexuality could be genetic and reversable and it could be psychological and irreversable. It's my opinion that it's mostly both and irreversable due to the sheer complexity of sexuality.
My personal belief is that we're now living in the most homosexual time there will ever be. While evolution won't select for it, sexual divergence has been firmly repressed by society. Gays and similar have been all but forced to marry and procreate so as to appear normal. Now, they're not. This will lead to fewer of them becoming genetic parents, gradually removing the genetic predisposition from the gene pool. A century from now, I wouldn't be surprised if GBLATs comprised less than 1% of the population.
Or not.
If the predisposition to GLBT is only partial and activated in psychological/environmental ways, then the gene(s) will survive in those that have the predisposition and don't become GLBT. If the gene is recessive and requires a pair for expression, then the genes will survive in recessive nonexpressive carriers like blue eyes does. If there are a complicated host of genetic and environmental factors that contribute, likewise the factors could be partially present have full proclivity to reproduce. AND if there has already been plenty of gay sex and non-spawning gays in history, then it seems gay may already be at a homeostasis.
1. I know. But we are still who we choose to be. People reject ideas they were raised to believe all the time. How we were raised does not put us in a box, well it can if we allow it.
2. Just because its a good thing, and because there is protection for it, or there should be protection for it doesn't negate a choice. People are going with the idea that only reason a gay person would want to be straight is to avoid being bashed and that never in history has a straight man wanted to be gay. Which some how leads to the conclusion that its not a choice and people are just doing what others think they should do. And on top of that they are only pretending 'cause sexuality is hard coded into our DNA. That's the idea I oppose.
The thing you are ignoring is that decisions have to make sense. Free will is not the abilty to decide something outside of all influinces and reasons. And there are only so many things that can be a reason to decide: gentics, environment, experience. You are trying to fashion the possibility of a decision (to act as if you had a different sexuality) without giving a reason. Well, without a reason, the decision seems unreasonable. :buh:
It's refreshing to hear from someone, especially a religious person, who's willing to question what they were taught.
Actually, if he is just accepting his religion as taught, there is nothing really to praise. Just accept that occasionally we will get lucky and faith will be nice faith. However, if he decided independantly that tolerance was better and then looked for a way to express that in his religion, then that is praiseworthy.
I interpret my religion as wanting me to be tolerant. Jesus often preaches love of everyone, and Jesus himself spent a great deal of his time hanging out with prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors, and people who were generally looked down upon. It is my belief that homosexuality is frowned upon by my god, but I also believe I am supposed to be tolerant of all races, religions, and sexual preferences and I am not to judge others but leave that to God.
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Unless I'm completely misreading him, that isn't the case. He's not questioning what he's been taught; he's saying that it's God's job to punish and reward, so he's going to let God do it.
After re-reading the post, I think you're right. I guess I was I that completely misread it...
Anyway, an unwillingness to question what you were taught growing up (after the fact, as a teen and then adult) is the hallmark of a slave.
*facepalm*
*~*~*~
IT seems to me one important thing to remember is that our morality tends to take people, individuals, as the object of moral utility. We don't, directly, anyway, say what is good and not "for," or "about" genes.
So while every last bit of analysis in the gene department yields the result that it causes the host not to spawn, that can only be called a defect of the gene, or in the world of genes. For one individual it is absolutely irrelevant whether that individual can spawn progeny - progeny aren't him.
So, unless we want to start talking about Humanity not as cognitive creatures who can feel happiness and hurt, but instead the gene pool and the biochemical phenomenon of the continued generation of a certain anthropomorphic form, I think we have to conclude it *is* wrong to talk of defects.
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If we are to believe that homosexuality is a way for nature to combat overpopulation (one of the most recent theories regarding the origin of homosexuality), then as nature would have produced it, surely it is not a defect or anything unnatural? Why can't people understand that a difference can still be normal, if the difference is intended to be produced?
I am personally not convinced that homosexuality is selected for by evolutionary forces. There is just too much genetic advantage to having a population stressed to the point where only the fittest survive, and overpopulation does exactly that.
I think it's a purely accidental thing and the mistake being made is that we are taking our moral cues from the blind hand of evolution. Why should we do this? Why does something have to be selected for for us to accept and treasure it? Whence comes the authority of evolution in moral matters? It's very hard to argue that certain physical and mental conditions are selected for, but we are still free as humans to scoff at the hand of nature and treasure and accept all people.
Meh. Personally, I no longer care about the origins of homosexuality. The only fact that really strikes me as relevant is that, whether due to genetics, pre-natal stimuli, upbringing or whatever, homosexual orientation is not a choice. I'm straight, sure; but I've been into BDSM before I even knew what BDSM was. It figured into some of my earliest pubescent fantasies. It was just there. And I figure that if that can hold true for sexual kinks or fetishes, why not for sexual orientation? And as long as we can all manage our sexual impulses in ways that are self-and-others respecting and affirming (harder said than done for anyone, I think)... really, what's the big deal?
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@gerg: I never said that overpopulation was necessary for survival of the fittest (hereafter SOTF). It is an occasion for SOTF, just as normal food chain situations are. Whether it be selectional stress to kill off the slowest (predators) or the best at making use of food (overpopulation) SOTF is at work.
Quote from gerg »
If this is correct, there must be a reason why this occurs.
Yes, there must be a cause of it. But there need not be a purpose for it. Accidents happen all the time in evolution. Not everything has to be advantageous or disadvantageous. Some things are just neither and are little quirks. Actually every genetic mutation is just a quirk, but not all quirks are helpful or harmful.
Still, your ideas are somewhat interesting if wholly speculative.
I'd sooner believe in Intelligent Design. At least that isn't a complete contradiction of the known facts.
gerg, natural selection arises from three premises: scarcity - the ability of populations to expand is infinite but the ability of an environment to sustain organisms is finite; variability - organisms have varied traits which affect their rates of survival and reproduction; and heredity - these traits can be passed on (generally from parent to offspring). The fittest survive because compared to less fit organisms, the fittest have more offspring and outcompete the least fit which end up as a relatively tiny or nonexistant part of the population.
Individuals do not, as a starting point, care about each other. An individual who helps somebody else is reducing their own fitness and increasing that of others. Such an individual will reproduce less, and their offspring will reproduce less, and so on until they die out - meanwhile, those who are being helped will reproduce more, outcompeting the altruists even more rapidly. Genes are selfish; they will do whatever maximally enables their survival and propagation (and genes are the important players - forgive all of my anthropomorphization). If an organism can easily wipe out its competitors, it would be evolutionarily foolish not to (and would itself be wiped out by whichever competitor did).
You are suggesting that gay genes will somehow occur for the good of the community. (I'm holding that gay genes exist for the sake of simplicity, but the point works regardless. If you're positing this natural mechanism as arising ex nihilo somehow, that's even more crazy.) But if everybody else is going to embrace gayness, why should I bother acting likewise? What's to stop me from not being gay and instead having lots of hetero-sex and a lot more kids? Nothing. Everybody else can be gay and I'll reap the benefits without having to incur the costs. Of course, everybody else['s genes] reason the same way and stop being gay (or, strictly speaking, die out when competing with those who aren't gay).
Natural selection acts most strongly on the individual level. It does act on groups too, but generally at a lower tier. Selection pressures on an individual can be divided into a within-group component (you as compared to the others in your group) and a between-group component (the effect of your group compared to other groups). Group selection requires certain conditions to be a significant force, and finding these conditions is central to sociobiology - and your theory of homosexuality does not simply pass the tests.
As a quick speculative point, isn't it possible that the existence of multiple siblings is enough of a fact to ensure the inheritability of recessive homosexual genes even thought the actual homosexual is drastically less likely to reproduce? Think of it this way: parents typically have multiple children, and if gayness is recessive then 66% of a gay person's non-gay siblings will have at least one of the recessive gay traits.
So even though the gays themselves aren't having children, they are aiding a small community (family or clan) that shares this genetic marker of homosexuality and helping their survival, prosperity, and success. In this way, the gay genes are genetically selectable in the same way that a tendency to have fewer children could be selectable. (those fewer children recieve a greater investment of energy and have a greater chance to survive.) Many species have smaller litters, including humans and one has to guess that the complicated human animal with so much invested in the upbringing of even a single child could benefit from a non-reproducing relative to protect it and act as a duplicate/replacement parent or also to ensure the survival of a sibling.
Now those siblings are very likely to carry the gay genes in a non-expressed form, which shows a possible way for gayness to be advantageous and inheritable.
As a quick speculative point, isn't it possible that the existence of multiple siblings is enough of a fact to ensure the inheritability of recessive homosexual genes even thought the actual homosexual is drastically less likely to reproduce? Think of it this way: parents typically have multiple children, and if gayness is recessive then 66% of a gay person's non-gay siblings will have at least one of the recessive gay traits.
So even though the gays themselves aren't having children, they are aiding a small community (family or clan) that shares this genetic marker of homosexuality and helping their survival, prosperity, and success. In this way, the gay genes are genetically selectable in the same way that a tendency to have fewer children could be selectable. (those fewer children recieve a greater investment of energy and have a greater chance to survive.) Many species have smaller litters, including humans and one has to guess that the complicated human animal with so much invested in the upbringing of even a single child could benefit from a non-reproducing relative to protect it and act as a duplicate/replacement parent or also to ensure the survival of a sibling.
Now those siblings are very likely to carry the gay genes in a non-expressed form, which shows a possible way for gayness to be advantageous and inheritable.
Broadly, that's one of the hypotheses floating around, that gay people can help their straight relatives. I'm not sure of the details in this case, but inclusive fitness (aka kin selection, more or less what you're referring to) is one way of working through the issue. Though, merely that the possibility exists is an insufficient demonstration, but yes, it is a possible explanation for some homosexuality.
Goddammit, no you're not. I hate dissembling. Just go ahead and say you think she's biased. I ****ing hate when people beat around the bush pretending to be nice. It's so much easier when people just say what they're thinking. Damn.
There are plenty of occasions, I think - no wait, let me say that I think it can be vastly helpful to adhere to some formulation of a rule-like system, stressing non-confrontation, charitable interpretation, and all that, for dealings with all people in all scenarios. It is a skill to speak softly and find the kind words no matter the case.
This would be to respond to your hatred of dissembling - which, truly, can be a waste in a mutually constructed context of debate, but not even always then.
Except in America, the only country in the world to regularly execute the mentally subnormal.
Diverging back to the point: if homosexuality has a genetic root, then it is a defect. People don't like to use the word because of the onus it carries, but that's what it means.
(Lest any outraged gay Salvationer wish to debate that, may I remind you first that if being gay is not genetic, it must be psychological. You can settle for having a minor genetic defect, in which there is no shame, or admit that the nutters who "cure" gay kids at those camps are right.)
If we clarify that the "psychological" disjunct means just "being gay is not entirely genetic and made up otherwise of psychological factors," then yes, that is true.
If B_S was objecting to even that, then on the assumption he wasn't making the useless statement that it's not a necessary disjunction, I have to tell him I'm pretty sure genetics and psychology are all that's at play in any behaviour.
My personal belief is that we're now living in the most homosexual time there will ever be. While evolution won't select for it, sexual divergence has been firmly repressed by society. Gays and similar have been all but forced to marry and procreate so as to appear normal. Now, they're not. This will lead to fewer of them becoming genetic parents, gradually removing the genetic predisposition from the gene pool. A century from now, I wouldn't be surprised if GBLATs comprised less than 1% of the population.
Heh, interesting possibility. But as said, it could already have reached a stable state.
I am personally not convinced that homosexuality is selected for by evolutionary forces. There is just too much genetic advantage to having a population stressed to the point where only the fittest survive, and overpopulation does exactly that.
I'm really intrigued by this one but having trouble with it.
Genetic advantage for what? You can't favour SOTF itself. SOTF isn't a gene. Yes, any population which has elite genes will have *a* pressure towards overpopulation - a pressure on the carriers of elite genes to have properties that create overpopulation (or anything else which will magnify SOTF). But if a gene's probability for existence is increased in a pool that doesn't etch it out, then everything would want it to go that way, too.
The statement has to be of numbers. If SOTF is decreased, every gene's probability for existence is up, but that means no one of them is popular, and in a limited population, they may edge each other out just by the... limited space. Random fluctuations would end genetic lines.
... it's like society and morality, but a strange opposite. We settle for a world where we don't have all the advantages for ourselves we could want, because it really messes up everyone if everyone is im-/amoral. We put up the system that gives anybody a chance at the cost of individual power. Genes which cause a system of low SOTF are actually screwing themselves. It's best for a gene to cause an SOTF increase - a chance to be edged out, but essentially a gamble, that it is in fact the superior adaptation.
It's a strange opposite because this and society are deeply similar, but on the face of it, it's backwards. Whereas people compromise the system of tyranny (favoring the elites) into some kind of equality, the genes are "compromising" with an elitist system, each of them rejecting the 'easy route' of low SOTF, avoiding the unstable egalitarian situation which is the deceiving first choice. Hah! That was stimulating.
Gee, thanks for sorting this out with me me, guys forum software.
I think it's a purely accidental thing and the mistake being made is that we are taking our moral cues from the blind hand of evolution. Why should we do this? Why does something have to be selected for for us to accept and treasure it? Whence comes the authority of evolution in moral matters? It's very hard to argue that certain physical and mental conditions are selected for, but we are still free as humans to scoff at the hand of nature and treasure and accept all people.
Aren't Human brains cool like that? But maybe they are evolution's mistake, too.
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This is a perfect example of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. There are any number of reasons why a third male child is more likely to be gay than a first, but none of them have anything to do with nature correcting for overpopulation because an excess of males doesn't cause overpopulation - or if it does, it automatically corrects with the next generation as the excess males don't increase the multiplicative capacity of the species.
This is perfectly true. For a species to overreach its capacity, all you really need is one very busy male and a lot of females.
As for your other answers, though...are you just posing these as random possibilities, or do you believe that homosexuality is most likely to be caused by outside psychological factors rather than genes? Also, I'd like to see some data backing up your generalizations, because I'm not sure that they hold true (especially the first one) in modern society.
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I hide myself within my flower
That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
If B_S was objecting to even that, then on the assumption he wasn't making the useless statement that it's not a necessary disjunction, I have to tell him I'm pretty sure genetics and psychology are all that's at play in any behaviour.
But those instincts are different in that one is right and one is wrong. We may fear paedophiles because they may pose an active threat to our children. How do gay people pose an active threat to you?
Aside: I'm not well read in the literature by any means, but assuming that pedophilia is strictly a matter of sexual preference, and not a compulsion, then there's no more reason for a child to fear a pedophile per se than there is for a woman to fear a heterosexual man per se. The law, at least, seems to recognize that molesters and predators are not insane.
Now, naturally, there's an important difference between pedophilia and most other forms of sexuality: namely, it's a desire for a sort of sexual activity that is uncontentiously and inherently wrong. But if I'm right, and there are pedophiles out there who can recognize this and choose not to act on their desire, then this desire has got to be painful for them - another excellent reason to look into the roots of sexual orientation and means for altering it.
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They're just random possibilities that would explain the observed evidence. For crying out loud ... I'm the child of a single mother who went to an all-male boarding school between ages 11-16. If anyone was going to bat for the wrong team on either or both of the bases I threw out it'd be me, but I'm as hetero as they come.
I was raised by two college-educated, Catholic, moderate liberals, and I have gone to church on a supermajority of Sundays in my life. Nevertheless I am, as Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman so wonderfully put it, gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Like you say, you can be in virtually any environment and end up with a nonstandard sexuality. I doubt that external psychological influences are that important to the determination of one's orientation, although I suspect that they do greatly affect how well or badly you react to that discovery.
Quote from Jedit »
Answering the question posed in the topic now: non-indoctrinated homophobes feel the way they do because homosexual acts are outside their nature and conception. It's the same natural revulsion most of us feel towards paedophiles. We're given biological imperatives that sometimes do not imprint. It's not the fault of the person who does not follow those imperatives that this happened, but instinctively we see them as an outsider not to be trusted.
You're really never going to be able to test for the existence of a truly natural revulsion, though, because society always conditions people's responses to stimuli, even something as basic as sex. Like it or not, our current culture does tell people that homosexual contact is icky, so a researcher can't get an unbiased sample. Paedophilia is revolting for some of the same reasons, mainly fairly recent ideas about the age at which children can behave sexually, but I think that what separates that kind of response is that paedophilia is almost always non-consensual. Non-consensual sex of any kind does provoke a very natural negative response, and so paedophilia is very not okay for almost anyone. Note that in non-current societies such as ancient Greece, where the paedophilia was not necessarily non-consensual, it didn't provoke the same sort of reaction.
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That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
That's debatable. People do keep insisting on using bonobos as an example, but all their displayed homosexuality is part of social ritual rather than desire. Homosexuality has also been observed in cats and sheep, but almost always when the male is put into heat without access to a female. I don't know of any non-heated species that practices it on any wide scale, however.
Dolphins are the classic example, but they may be just all-around horny and not particularly particular. They're basically the Captain Jack Harknesses of the sea.
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You're really never going to be able to test for the existence of a truly natural revulsion, though, because society always conditions people's responses to stimuli, even something as basic as sex.
Anthropology and developmental psychology are kind of useful, no?
I don't see any reason not to believe homophobic tendencies are different than any other bias against minority groups that can be seen everywhere else in human culture. Saying "I don't like gays because they're icky/immoral" isn't far removed psychologically from saying "I don't like blacks because they're stupid" even if race and sexual orientation are completely different. Our basest psyche doesn't use logic to make fair decisions about other people, and in a majority of situations it will label something different as "bad". Attempting to gloss over this basic feeling with semantic arguments is pointless and ultimately counterproductive to a more ideal society. I would argue that most of these negative stereotypes are a product of people trying to label and justify the "bad" feeling they get when confronted with something different. If more people took their feelings at face value and made a conscious decision to deal with those moral defects (I can play with semantics too :D) I believe we would live in a better world.
Sorry if that was preachy (or made no sense at all), I'm a little wired at the moment.
The biggest thing I don't understand about homosexuality is the whole "butch" woman, "sissy" man phenomenon.
If gay men went around like a troupe of Spartans, totally turned on by one another's raging masculinity, that would be considerably more comprehensible to me than the (not groundless) stereotype of the gay man who acts effeminate and talks with a lisp and has impeccable fashion sense. There are many gay and lesbian couplings where one partner clearly fulfils the dominant, "masculine" role, and another the passive, "feminine" role, with styles of dress and haircut and mannerism taking their cue from the larger culture. I mean, have any of you seen pictures of Lindsey Lohan's girlfriend? It's like Lohan said to herself, "I want a new boyfriend -- just one without a *****."
It would seem that human nature inherently gravitates towards a masculine/feminine dynamic in romantic relationships; but for gay people this dynamic manifests within the same sex. It sounds simple at face value, but for some reason it still baffles me.
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I don't see any reason not to believe homophobic tendencies are different than any other bias against minority groups that can be seen everywhere else in human culture. Saying "I don't like gays because they're icky/immoral" isn't far removed psychologically from saying "I don't like blacks because they're stupid" even if race and sexual orientation are completely different. Our basest psyche doesn't use logic to make fair decisions about other people, and in a majority of situations it will label something different as "bad". Attempting to gloss over this basic feeling with semantic arguments is pointless and ultimately counterproductive to a more ideal society. I would argue that most of these negative stereotypes are a product of people trying to label and justify the "bad" feeling they get when confronted with something different. If more people took their feelings at face value and made a conscious decision to deal with those moral defects (I can play with semantics too :D) I believe we would live in a better world.
I think you're absolutely right. People don't hold the belief that homosexual acts are immoral because of religious teachings. They hold it for the reasons you just gave. That so many established religions support that belief only cements it in peopple's minds, and turns some who don't believe it (such as myself) away from religion.
Besides, teh buttsex genuinely is icky to a lot of people regardless of the gender of their partner.
That's true, but when's the last time you heard a heterosexual slandered for having anal sex with their opposite-sex boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife? Yeah, me neither.
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Before you make that prediction, do recall that many traits, whether or not they result in effective sterility, are constantly maintained in the population within recessive genes. There are many examples of genetic disorders continuing to exist despite the fact that they kill before the sufferer can reproduce.
More to the point, since homosexuality is most likely a complex combination of multiple genes and environmental factors, it can probably arise in a great number of ways. Most likely, there is no single "gay gene" to be bred out of a population, an event already fairly unlikely by the rules of inheritance.
Oh, and also - do you really mean to suggest that every gay or lesbian kid has a secretly homosexual parent?
That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
Yeah, I vascillated there between neutrality and goodness as the proper descriptor not to bias for homosexuality but to express the notion that all being is good. Still, the inclusion of the word "morally" was silly on my part.
If anyone has earned the right to be spoken to politely, it's Mamelon. And I don't think she has ever missed the idea that someone is disagreeing with her just because the point was made delicately.
What you mean to say is
"if homosexuality has a genetic root, then it is a genetic defect that lowers the likelihood its host spawning."
Becuase you could likewise say
"if homosexuality has a psycholocial root, then it is a psychological defect that lowers the likelihood of its host spawning."
In that form, I don't disagree with either formulation. They make clear that the defectiveness is contingent on the imperative to spawn. No imperative to spawn, no defect.
Wrong. And naughty reasoning as well. Tempting people to agree because the alternative would be scary.
Sexuality could be genetic and reversable and it could be psychological and irreversable. It's my opinion that it's mostly both and irreversable due to the sheer complexity of sexuality.
Or not.
If the predisposition to GLBT is only partial and activated in psychological/environmental ways, then the gene(s) will survive in those that have the predisposition and don't become GLBT. If the gene is recessive and requires a pair for expression, then the genes will survive in recessive nonexpressive carriers like blue eyes does. If there are a complicated host of genetic and environmental factors that contribute, likewise the factors could be partially present have full proclivity to reproduce. AND if there has already been plenty of gay sex and non-spawning gays in history, then it seems gay may already be at a homeostasis.
The thing you are ignoring is that decisions have to make sense. Free will is not the abilty to decide something outside of all influinces and reasons. And there are only so many things that can be a reason to decide: gentics, environment, experience. You are trying to fashion the possibility of a decision (to act as if you had a different sexuality) without giving a reason. Well, without a reason, the decision seems unreasonable. :buh:
Actually, if he is just accepting his religion as taught, there is nothing really to praise. Just accept that occasionally we will get lucky and faith will be nice faith. However, if he decided independantly that tolerance was better and then looked for a way to express that in his religion, then that is praiseworthy.
Yes, if the sterility trait is governed by a recessive gene which neither parent has expressed.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
*facepalm*
*~*~*~
IT seems to me one important thing to remember is that our morality tends to take people, individuals, as the object of moral utility. We don't, directly, anyway, say what is good and not "for," or "about" genes.
So while every last bit of analysis in the gene department yields the result that it causes the host not to spawn, that can only be called a defect of the gene, or in the world of genes. For one individual it is absolutely irrelevant whether that individual can spawn progeny - progeny aren't him.
So, unless we want to start talking about Humanity not as cognitive creatures who can feel happiness and hurt, but instead the gene pool and the biochemical phenomenon of the continued generation of a certain anthropomorphic form, I think we have to conclude it *is* wrong to talk of defects.
Awesome avatar provided by Krashbot @ [Epic Graphics].
I am personally not convinced that homosexuality is selected for by evolutionary forces. There is just too much genetic advantage to having a population stressed to the point where only the fittest survive, and overpopulation does exactly that.
I think it's a purely accidental thing and the mistake being made is that we are taking our moral cues from the blind hand of evolution. Why should we do this? Why does something have to be selected for for us to accept and treasure it? Whence comes the authority of evolution in moral matters? It's very hard to argue that certain physical and mental conditions are selected for, but we are still free as humans to scoff at the hand of nature and treasure and accept all people.
Yes, there must be a cause of it. But there need not be a purpose for it. Accidents happen all the time in evolution. Not everything has to be advantageous or disadvantageous. Some things are just neither and are little quirks. Actually every genetic mutation is just a quirk, but not all quirks are helpful or harmful.
Still, your ideas are somewhat interesting if wholly speculative.
Scarce resources, more organisms die, et cetera, et cetera.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
gerg, natural selection arises from three premises: scarcity - the ability of populations to expand is infinite but the ability of an environment to sustain organisms is finite; variability - organisms have varied traits which affect their rates of survival and reproduction; and heredity - these traits can be passed on (generally from parent to offspring). The fittest survive because compared to less fit organisms, the fittest have more offspring and outcompete the least fit which end up as a relatively tiny or nonexistant part of the population.
Individuals do not, as a starting point, care about each other. An individual who helps somebody else is reducing their own fitness and increasing that of others. Such an individual will reproduce less, and their offspring will reproduce less, and so on until they die out - meanwhile, those who are being helped will reproduce more, outcompeting the altruists even more rapidly. Genes are selfish; they will do whatever maximally enables their survival and propagation (and genes are the important players - forgive all of my anthropomorphization). If an organism can easily wipe out its competitors, it would be evolutionarily foolish not to (and would itself be wiped out by whichever competitor did).
You are suggesting that gay genes will somehow occur for the good of the community. (I'm holding that gay genes exist for the sake of simplicity, but the point works regardless. If you're positing this natural mechanism as arising ex nihilo somehow, that's even more crazy.) But if everybody else is going to embrace gayness, why should I bother acting likewise? What's to stop me from not being gay and instead having lots of hetero-sex and a lot more kids? Nothing. Everybody else can be gay and I'll reap the benefits without having to incur the costs. Of course, everybody else['s genes] reason the same way and stop being gay (or, strictly speaking, die out when competing with those who aren't gay).
Natural selection acts most strongly on the individual level. It does act on groups too, but generally at a lower tier. Selection pressures on an individual can be divided into a within-group component (you as compared to the others in your group) and a between-group component (the effect of your group compared to other groups). Group selection requires certain conditions to be a significant force, and finding these conditions is central to sociobiology - and your theory of homosexuality does not simply pass the tests.
So even though the gays themselves aren't having children, they are aiding a small community (family or clan) that shares this genetic marker of homosexuality and helping their survival, prosperity, and success. In this way, the gay genes are genetically selectable in the same way that a tendency to have fewer children could be selectable. (those fewer children recieve a greater investment of energy and have a greater chance to survive.) Many species have smaller litters, including humans and one has to guess that the complicated human animal with so much invested in the upbringing of even a single child could benefit from a non-reproducing relative to protect it and act as a duplicate/replacement parent or also to ensure the survival of a sibling.
Now those siblings are very likely to carry the gay genes in a non-expressed form, which shows a possible way for gayness to be advantageous and inheritable.
Broadly, that's one of the hypotheses floating around, that gay people can help their straight relatives. I'm not sure of the details in this case, but inclusive fitness (aka kin selection, more or less what you're referring to) is one way of working through the issue. Though, merely that the possibility exists is an insufficient demonstration, but yes, it is a possible explanation for some homosexuality.
There are plenty of occasions, I think - no wait, let me say that I think it can be vastly helpful to adhere to some formulation of a rule-like system, stressing non-confrontation, charitable interpretation, and all that, for dealings with all people in all scenarios. It is a skill to speak softly and find the kind words no matter the case.
This would be to respond to your hatred of dissembling - which, truly, can be a waste in a mutually constructed context of debate, but not even always then.
If we clarify that the "psychological" disjunct means just "being gay is not entirely genetic and made up otherwise of psychological factors," then yes, that is true.
If B_S was objecting to even that, then on the assumption he wasn't making the useless statement that it's not a necessary disjunction, I have to tell him I'm pretty sure genetics and psychology are all that's at play in any behaviour.
Heh, interesting possibility. But as said, it could already have reached a stable state.
I'm really intrigued by this one but having trouble with it.
Genetic advantage for what? You can't favour SOTF itself. SOTF isn't a gene. Yes, any population which has elite genes will have *a* pressure towards overpopulation - a pressure on the carriers of elite genes to have properties that create overpopulation (or anything else which will magnify SOTF). But if a gene's probability for existence is increased in a pool that doesn't etch it out, then everything would want it to go that way, too.
The statement has to be of numbers. If SOTF is decreased, every gene's probability for existence is up, but that means no one of them is popular, and in a limited population, they may edge each other out just by the... limited space. Random fluctuations would end genetic lines.
... it's like society and morality, but a strange opposite. We settle for a world where we don't have all the advantages for ourselves we could want, because it really messes up everyone if everyone is im-/amoral. We put up the system that gives anybody a chance at the cost of individual power. Genes which cause a system of low SOTF are actually screwing themselves. It's best for a gene to cause an SOTF increase - a chance to be edged out, but essentially a gamble, that it is in fact the superior adaptation.
It's a strange opposite because this and society are deeply similar, but on the face of it, it's backwards. Whereas people compromise the system of tyranny (favoring the elites) into some kind of equality, the genes are "compromising" with an elitist system, each of them rejecting the 'easy route' of low SOTF, avoiding the unstable egalitarian situation which is the deceiving first choice. Hah! That was stimulating.
Gee, thanks for sorting this out with me me,
guysforum software.Aren't Human brains cool like that? But maybe they are evolution's mistake, too.
Awesome avatar provided by Krashbot @ [Epic Graphics].
This is perfectly true. For a species to overreach its capacity, all you really need is one very busy male and a lot of females.
As for your other answers, though...are you just posing these as random possibilities, or do you believe that homosexuality is most likely to be caused by outside psychological factors rather than genes? Also, I'd like to see some data backing up your generalizations, because I'm not sure that they hold true (especially the first one) in modern society.
That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
I drive a metal pole through your brain, and the resulting injury modifies your behavior. Is this genetic or psychological?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Aside: I'm not well read in the literature by any means, but assuming that pedophilia is strictly a matter of sexual preference, and not a compulsion, then there's no more reason for a child to fear a pedophile per se than there is for a woman to fear a heterosexual man per se. The law, at least, seems to recognize that molesters and predators are not insane.
Now, naturally, there's an important difference between pedophilia and most other forms of sexuality: namely, it's a desire for a sort of sexual activity that is uncontentiously and inherently wrong. But if I'm right, and there are pedophiles out there who can recognize this and choose not to act on their desire, then this desire has got to be painful for them - another excellent reason to look into the roots of sexual orientation and means for altering it.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
What do you mean by "exists."
I was raised by two college-educated, Catholic, moderate liberals, and I have gone to church on a supermajority of Sundays in my life. Nevertheless I am, as Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman so wonderfully put it, gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Like you say, you can be in virtually any environment and end up with a nonstandard sexuality. I doubt that external psychological influences are that important to the determination of one's orientation, although I suspect that they do greatly affect how well or badly you react to that discovery.
You're really never going to be able to test for the existence of a truly natural revulsion, though, because society always conditions people's responses to stimuli, even something as basic as sex. Like it or not, our current culture does tell people that homosexual contact is icky, so a researcher can't get an unbiased sample. Paedophilia is revolting for some of the same reasons, mainly fairly recent ideas about the age at which children can behave sexually, but I think that what separates that kind of response is that paedophilia is almost always non-consensual. Non-consensual sex of any kind does provoke a very natural negative response, and so paedophilia is very not okay for almost anyone. Note that in non-current societies such as ancient Greece, where the paedophilia was not necessarily non-consensual, it didn't provoke the same sort of reaction.
That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
Dolphins are the classic example, but they may be just all-around horny and not particularly particular. They're basically the Captain Jack Harknesses of the sea.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Anthropology and developmental psychology are kind of useful, no?
Bingo.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Sorry if that was preachy (or made no sense at all), I'm a little wired at the moment.
If gay men went around like a troupe of Spartans, totally turned on by one another's raging masculinity, that would be considerably more comprehensible to me than the (not groundless) stereotype of the gay man who acts effeminate and talks with a lisp and has impeccable fashion sense. There are many gay and lesbian couplings where one partner clearly fulfils the dominant, "masculine" role, and another the passive, "feminine" role, with styles of dress and haircut and mannerism taking their cue from the larger culture. I mean, have any of you seen pictures of Lindsey Lohan's girlfriend? It's like Lohan said to herself, "I want a new boyfriend -- just one without a *****."
It would seem that human nature inherently gravitates towards a masculine/feminine dynamic in romantic relationships; but for gay people this dynamic manifests within the same sex. It sounds simple at face value, but for some reason it still baffles me.
I think you're absolutely right. People don't hold the belief that homosexual acts are immoral because of religious teachings. They hold it for the reasons you just gave. That so many established religions support that belief only cements it in peopple's minds, and turns some who don't believe it (such as myself) away from religion.
Yes, and atheists are hated for what they believe, but the reaction on the part of the masses are the same in each case.
That's true, but when's the last time you heard a heterosexual slandered for having anal sex with their opposite-sex boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife? Yeah, me neither.