Science And Homosexuality

[JGJ@ReligionisBullshit]

There's also the sense in which, as social animals, our culture evolves along with us, since we produce it in big groups. Evolution of society is obviously a very vague topic. Still, I think a good argument can be made that gays and lesbians serve important communal needs and therefore further the interests of the species as a whole, or of groups within it, even if they turn out not to have children. It seems possible that Hebraic desert tribes benefitted less from homosexuality than, say, Greek city states, or city states in Palestine who had different social structures from the Hebrews.

 

 

You should read "The Moral Animal" it provides some very good insights on the evolutionary psychology. Why we are the way we are. It goes into detail which you describe here.

[Thurisaz]

Do we have no evolutionary purpose?

 

Are we natures mistakes on the road to create the perfect heterosexual?

 

Dunno, ask evolution itself

 

Honestly, even if one's own genes may not be handed over to the next generation, there might be some benefit in... well... "non-hetero" behavior for a species as a whole, as (if memory serves) has been hinted here. So, I don't know whether I sounded like what you describe above, but if so, rest assured that I didn't mean it that way

[LosingMyReligion]

Well, I agree with Tiffany. I don't believe any of us are mistakes. There is a reason there has been none heterosexual behavior since the beginning of humankind...

So there has to be a purpose for it or else the trait would die out.

 

I guess we have to keep searching for it.

[LosingMyReligion]

After reading all the posts above I can only conclude that atheists believe all GLBT people (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered) to be mistakes, oopses, accidents of evolution... the remainder in an otherwise perfectly independent system.

 

Do we have no evolutionary purpose?

 

Are we natures mistakes on the road to create the perfect heterosexual?

 

Well, I don't know about that. But I did read a report several years ago that claimed that homosexual behavior in animals that exhibited it did tend to increase at times when the population of that species had become too large to be supported by the environment. So maybe homosexuality is sort of a natural form of birth control.

 

 

I agree with this theory, as it has been one that has always made alot of sense. There has always been homosexual people on the earth...Perhaps it is a natural fail safe to prevent population overload?

With the world population already expanding perhaps there is an increased need for it and natural selection is favoring alot of gay people.

 

Just my little hypothesis.

 

I just believe our existence is more than any accident of evolution.

[♦ ficino ♦]

I think three important points, which others have mentioned, too, are:

1 homosexuality does not entail not having children

2 sexuality, whether homo, hetero, bi, or whatever, is a complex phenomenon, unlike, say, having a certain eye color, so there are likely to be more than one cause interconnecting differently with different people

3 these different "-alities" are socially constructed; they're not just brute facts of nature.

 

So, to ask whether homosexuality is adaptive for the species is a question that needs unpacking.

 

An example. Using models derived from population analysis and citing some stuff in Plutarch, Wm. Armstrong Percy in Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece (Univ. Illinois, 1996) argues that ancient Sparta and other agrarian city states promoted homosexuality among the landowning classes during the first decade or more of a young man's life in order to hold down the number of children he'd sire in his lifetime. If he satisfied sexual and romantic desires with a boy until he was, say, 30, a guy would not have as many children as if he married and had children starting at age 19 or 20. With a limited amount of farmland, the city state was thus spared the problem of dividing land among too many heirs, or the problem of giving it to the eldest son and then facing what to do with the younger sons. So the custom of pederasty served the social purpose of limiting births among a segment of the population. (Not much is known about the lower classes.)

 

Certainly this does not serve as a sole explanation of a complex system of customs. But if Percy is correct, this is an example of -- fluidity of what we're trying to talk about when we talk about homosexuality

-- adaptive purposes of it

-- invalidity of the assumption that gays and lesbians don't reproduce

 

The Spartans really disliked men who did not eventually marry. They were publicly shamed. They also disliked infertile marriages; the husband would have children with another woman, often a slave, if he and his wife didn't have kids. So once the man was married, his duty to sire children for the state began. If he was 30, though, he wouldn't sire too many of them.

 

Noteworthy also and rather odd is the custom reported that on the wedding night, the Spartan bride would dress as a boy, cut her hair, and they'd have anal sex first. The husband was also expected to sleep in the barracks in the beginning of the marriage. The couple would have to sneak off to have sex - sort of desired by the authorities even though technically a no-no. If this is true and not legends made up by non-Spartans who thought the Spartans were weird, maybe it all helped pump up the husband's desire and readiness for a girl after he'd been used to boys for years. I dunno.

 

In midlife now I know many guys who have changed from male-male relationships to male-female (a number who have gotten married and had kids) and others who went from married with children to male-male, often with the marriages ending. So "orientation" is not fixed in every individual.

 

It's exciting though to look at a sphere of life that calls out for so much more investigation.

[cathuria]

Do we have no evolutionary purpose?

 

Are we natures mistakes on the road to create the perfect heterosexual?

 

 

Well, first of all, I think we could move beyond the notion of evolution having any real purpose at all.

But even if we accept such silliness, we can still move beyond the idea that "abnormal" equals bad.

 

Heck, Stephen Hawking is about as abnormal as a human can get.

 

And "normal" certainly can't define what is good. It is, after all, normal to think that homosexuality is any kind of a big deal at all.

We could move beyond that one, too.

[Taphophilia]

we all start out female in utero.

 

As a transgendered male this explanation sounds the best... I start out as a female, nature try's to make me into a male but can't complete the process so I end up a hybrid.....

 

Actually that kinda makes the GLBT crowd sound like defects, Yippee! I'm defective! lol

 

I can't say what it is that makes us GLBT but I hope were not natures accidents.

 

 

 

 

I feel like an X-Man, a girl with the power to transform into a man... only problem is I can't change back.

 

Tiffany,

 

Everything doesn't always work the way it's supposed to. The fact that it does is more of a "miracle" than when it doesn't.

I had a twin. I didn't know this until I was 28 years old. During the birth of my child, a tumor, that I didn't know I had broke open. I had to have it removed. The tumor was my twin.

The doctor told me it's not uncommon for the stronger twin to absorb the weaker twin in the early stages of development and that lots of people have odd things from in uetero that they don't know about.

The only difference for us is that we know about it.

 

Taph

[spamandham]

Getting back to the evolutionary purpose of homosexuality I'm beginning to get depressed here....

 

After reading all the posts above I can only conclude that atheists believe all GLBT people (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered) to be mistakes, oopses, accidents of evolution... the remainder in an otherwise perfectly independent system.

 

There are no mistakes in evolution any more than there is any a priori purpose in evolution. Some traits favor gene replication more than others. Is the purpose of your life to you really driven by how well your makeup facilitates the replication of your genes? I certainly hope not.

[Guest Tiffany]

Thank you all for answering my questions so completely. I realize I still had some of my old Pagan religion seeping through again and I was upset that I wasn't some special creature with a purpose in life.

 

Reading all your posts was just what I needed to slap that silly idea right back out of my head, Thank you all again!

[loves_learning]

Thank you all for answering my questions so completely. I realize I still had some of my old Pagan religion seeping through again and I was upset that I wasn't some special creature with a purpose in life.

 

Reading all your posts was just what I needed to slap that silly idea right back out of my head, Thank you all again!

 

After skimming through everything here, Tiffany probably noted one of the most important things to keep in mind when searching for a scientific "reason" for homosexuality and/or behaviors that are considered to be "unnatural" or "deviant from the norm."

 

While it is great and good for scientists to pursue answers to why we are the way we are, science must be careful when labeling what is natural and what is not...what is normal and what is not. After all, hermaphrodites occur naturally, but are considered to be abnormal. That is a label...a normative statement indicating that there is some form of perfected normal-ness in humans, and if that is true, then it would logically follow that the ideal is for all humans to strive to be that. Once you go and start labeling sexuality or body traits as defective, a deviation from the norm, then it opens the door for people to start "treating" those abnormal traits.

 

We've seen it already in "treatment centers" for gays and transgendered people, these clinics that claim that homosexuality is a mental illness. You know what they base their hypotheses on? Scientific studies that indicate that gays have different balances of brain chemicals, and that the rate of suicide, promiscuity, and addictive behaviors is much higher for homosexuals (completely ignoring the influence that society has on them because they aren't accepted).

 

Really, in the long run, does it matter whether or not someone is born gay or if they choose to be gay (or transgendered...or anything else)? By trying to find a biological reason for it, it seems to imply that it would be idiotic to choose such a lifestyle, which in turn underwrites the negative view of homosexuality. To be truly radical, I choose to completely ignore such scholarship, because I cannot personally find a reason for it to become useful, and see only negative outcomes by looking for a gene or biological trait that "makes" people gay.

 

Food for thought...

[Taphophilia]

Hi LL,

 

I know that you are busy and don't have time to post much, but I always enjoy reading what you have to say. Please come back as often as you can.

 

I think in terms of "normal" and how science uses the term as people who are right handed is normal in humans as opposed to being left handed. Also having brown eyes is normal as opposed to having blue eyes or even green. Human genetics that occur most frequently are normal, but that doesn't mean people who are left handed are abnormal and different.

 

I do agree and I don't think it matters if a person is gay or not. I do think if the study of genetics, even a cause for gayness, is important to human understanding and where we as a species are headed. However, it can be a slipery slope.

 

Taph

[spamandham]

Human genetics that occur most frequently are normal, but that doesn't mean people who are left handed are abnormal and different.

 

Of course it means that. I'm a lefty so I can say that.

 

People often use the words "normal" and "abnormal" as judgments, which doesn't generally make any sense. I hope no-one here is of the opinion that the normalization of the species is a desirable goal, but for those who might, keep in mind that a master race is only superior as long as the environment never changes, but of course it changes constantly. Variety ensures the survival of the species for those who care about such things.

 

It could be left handedness that provides the key trait necessary for the survival of our species after nuclear winter, or homosexuality could result in a crucial resistance to HIV that allows our species to survive the next mutation of the disease. We don't know what odd traits may become beneficial, but we know that this is the mechanism that got us here today.

[Thurisaz]

It all boils down to the difference between "is" and "should be", no?

 

So being homosexual is "abnormal"? In what sense? In the sense that it's uncommon, compared to the majority, the statement is true. In the sense that "people should be hetero, dammit!", the statement would be false.

Of course this is basically the goo' ol' naturalistic fallacy - the claim that if something is "natural" then it's the only "right" thing. Science strives to describe the world around us as accurately as possible. It deals strictly with the "is". The "should be" is anyone's personal decision!

 

So if science 100 % confirms one day that, say, homosexuality is caused by "uncommon" brain chemistry, that's an "is". Whether this means that this uncommon "is" is really something that must be "corrected" is beyond the interest of science.

 

Like one of my math professors said back then when I was studying in TU (technical university) Braunschweig, "There are poeple who ask me 'What purpose does all that serve?'. Frankly, I don't care. I formulate the theorems, and as far as I'm concerned, that's it. As soon as I see that my formulas are correct, I don't think about the rest. If someone finds a practical application for my formulas, all the better for them, but I don't bother".

[Onyx]

http://www.family.org/cforum/fosi/homosexu...af/a0028248.cfm

 

What do you think of this?

[JGJ@ReligionisBullshit]

http://www.family.org/cforum/fosi/homosexu...af/a0028248.cfm

 

What do you think of this?

 

It would take some time to rebutt this and the post would be long as well, but I already see the holes.

[I Broke Free]

He couldn’t communicate his fears to his dad—in fact, Jeremy couldn’t relate to him at all. So, slowly, he found himself in a world with no male companions or acceptance from men. Soon, Jeremy began to crave attention from guys and even fantasize what it could be like if a boy really liked him.

 

What do I think??

 

I think Jeremy had these fantasies long before he lost his relationship with his father. I have had this discussion with scores of gay men over the last three decades. NONE of them would relate to the tale related above. It is just a convenient theory that fits well within the fundy belief system. It is a load of crap if I ever saw one.

 

I was never taunted at school and had loads of male and female friends. I also had an excellent and close relationship with my father that never faltered even when I told him I was gay. I fantasized about relationships with men because I was gay, not because I was unloved by my father.

 

IBF

[LosingMyReligion]

I agree.

 

Infact, throughout school the majority of my closest friends were men. I was inundated with male figures throughout my life. That still did not orient me sexually towards men. It happened at birth as far as I can tell.

 

I remember when I was a little kid--8 years old--and I saw the movie 'The Blue Lagoon' on network television. I paid more attention to Christopher Atkins in a loin cloth than Brooke Shields...I even got my mom to buy me the video cassette tape of that movie, and I still watch it to this day.

So it was certainly not something that lack of a male figure produced. You could use that argument for juvenile deliquency, but not a sexual pref.

[spamandham]

http://www.family.org/cforum/fosi/homosexu...af/a0028248.cfm

 

What do you think of this?

 

What do I think? I think it's some delusional idiot trying to justify to himself why he cares who is filling who's holes with what, when he should be asking himself why he's drinking snake oil.

 

Da' buybull shays we should stone 'dem perverts, and Jebus love 'em so much he wants a lynchin'.

[loves_learning]

Kind of weird...but the day that I initially read this thread, I got into a "discussion" about queer theory at work with the Catholic janitor (well...not so much that he even understood what queer theory is...but I was reading a book about it and he saw it). He likes to pretend that he's pretty informed about things, and insists that gays are mentally ill. Guess where he gets his info???

 

Anyway, he tried to liken two bulimic women basing a love-relationship on making each other vomit. Can you believe it? But yes...that is what he said...two men having anal sex is equitable to that because both are sick, right?

 

I respectfully disagreed, and told him that his logic was flawed...he kept insisting that the anus is not a sexual organ...I told him that there were plenty of people who liked anal intercourse, whether or not they were gay...blah blah blah. He wasn't into listening, and due to the fact that I was at work, felt that the conversation was inappropriate.

 

So...what do you think about my encounter? Ever had a similar one?

[Lycorth]

Kind of weird...but the day that I initially read this thread, I got into a "discussion" about queer theory at work with the Catholic janitor (well...not so much that he even understood what queer theory is...but I was reading a book about it and he saw it). He likes to pretend that he's pretty informed about things, and insists that gays are mentally ill. Guess where he gets his info???

 

Anyway, he tried to liken two bulimic women basing a love-relationship on making each other vomit. Can you believe it? But yes...that is what he said...two men having anal sex is equitable to that because both are sick, right?

 

I respectfully disagreed, and told him that his logic was flawed...he kept insisting that the anus is not a sexual organ...I told him that there were plenty of people who liked anal intercourse, whether or not they were gay...blah blah blah. He wasn't into listening, and due to the fact that I was at work, felt that the conversation was inappropriate.

 

So...what do you think about my encounter? Ever had a similar one?

 

Heh... he should stop sniffing his disinfectant so much. He's doing nothing but parroting Catholic propaganda on the matter, and you can tell he's refusing to think about the subject rationally. It's all emotional - he's probably disgusted by homosexuality and has to say all this stuff to convince himself he's on Gawd's side (or rather that Gawd is on his side). I find two men having sex to be rather nasty myself, but even a small amount of common sense clearly shows how gays aren't brain-damaged just because they have a different kink than hetersexual folks do.

 

The only brains that are damaged in regards to this are those who insist on believing unscienfitic tripe about homosexuality and those who just can't live without their gods hating the same things they do

[I Broke Free]

 

Anyway, he tried to liken two bulimic women basing a love-relationship on making each other vomit. Can you believe it? But yes...that is what he said...two men having anal sex is equitable to that because both are sick, right?

 

I respectfully disagreed, and told him that his logic was flawed...he kept insisting that the anus is not a sexual organ...I told him that there were plenty of people who liked anal intercourse, whether or not they were gay...blah blah blah. He wasn't into listening, and due to the fact that I was at work, felt that the conversation was inappropriate.

 

So...what do you think about my encounter? Ever had a similar one?

 

I have been upfront at work about being gay since 1979. I suppose that is why I am never privy to conversations like this at work (anyplace really). People have told me that I easily “pass” as heterosexual, but since no one in my life has every told me an off-color homosexual joke, I tend to think that people must at least suspect that I am gay.

 

I think most heterosexuals think that all gay men practice anal sex; it really is not the case, I know of several gay-male couples who don’t practice it. I personally don’t care for it at all. For me anyway it just plain hurts and I don’t find it at all sexually stimulating or enjoyable, and it can be a little messy. My partner and I have a very satisfying sex life nonetheless.

 

I have been reprimanded by fundy co-workers in the past for even mentioning is passing that I have a partner. They said it was inappropriate for me to discuss “sexual” matters at work?????? Apparently they cannot stop themselves from obsessing about gay sex when they learn someone is gay. When heterosexuals mention their spouse to me, I never contemplate what their sex life is about. Perhaps that is because it does not interest me. What does this say about them?

[loves_learning]

Fast question...anyone else ever heard of queer theory? It's some damn good thought provoking stuff...I strongly suggest checking it out.

 

Just to be a pain in the ass, (not really, because I have a socially motivated cause for doing so...), I ALWAYS refer to my boyfriend as my partner. For some reason, most of the people on this site think I'm a guy...but I'm a straight female. Anyway, I do it not so people "wonder" about me, but because I don't think it is anyone's business whether I'm gay or straight, male or female. It is my little way of flipping off the dominant social notions of what is normal and not normal...and trying to break as many stereotypes as possible in the process.

[Thurisaz]

So...what do you think about my encounter? Ever had a similar one?

 

Not in person. Online, yes.

 

It's perfectly normal. They all pretend to want to discuss stuff, but really they want to preach. They want to say the magic words their cult führers told them will convince convert everyone, and when they fail, they realize that the führers never taught them any "Plan B", so they just repeat "Plan A".

[♦ ficino ♦]

 

 

I respectfully disagreed, and told him that his logic was flawed...he kept insisting that the anus is not a sexual organ...I told him that there were plenty of people who liked anal intercourse, whether or not they were gay...blah blah blah.

 

I think this guy's facts are wrong as well as his logic. It's possible to stimulate the prostate gland from the rectum. Even the baseball player George Brett talked about liking his wife to do that to him. I'm surprised the janitor didn't know.

 

I was reading a review of a book about female orgasm, The Case of the Female Orgasm, which claims that it serves no evolutionary purpose. It's just a great side effect of evolution, according to the author, Elisabeth A. Lloyd. She says most primate females don't have orgasms. Would the janitor think that the clitoris is a sexual organ? If yes, how so, if it's not necessary for reproduction?

 

Both of these anatomical features seem to me to argue against the idea that God created humans with the intention that they should use sex just for procreation. I'd say the whole traditional, christian natural law assertion that sexual pleasure is just to promote reproduction is clearly off, if non-reproductive parts of the body provide sexual pleasure.

[JGJ@ReligionisBullshit]

 

 

I respectfully disagreed, and told him that his logic was flawed...he kept insisting that the anus is not a sexual organ...I told him that there were plenty of people who liked anal intercourse, whether or not they were gay...blah blah blah.

 

I think this guy's facts are wrong as well as his logic. It's possible to stimulate the prostate gland from the rectum. Even the baseball player George Brett talked about liking his wife to do that to him. I'm surprised the janitor didn't know.

 

I was reading a review of a book about female orgasm, The Case of the Female Orgasm, which claims that it serves no evolutionary purpose. It's just a great side effect of evolution, according to the author, Elisabeth A. Lloyd. She says most primate females don't have orgasms. Would the janitor think that the clitoris is a sexual organ? If yes, how so, if it's not necessary for reproduction?

 

Both of these anatomical features seem to me to argue against the idea that God created humans with the intention that they should use sex just for procreation. I'd say the whole traditional, christian natural law assertion that sexual pleasure is just to promote reproduction is clearly off, if non-reproductive parts of the body provide sexual pleasure.

 

 

What exactly are you calling non-reproductive parts?