I have little problem with homosexuality, and indeed think it is a vital, necessary and indeed beautiful part of God's universe.
Homosexual behavior is documented for some 2000 animals in the animal kingdom, including humans, penguins and swans. Even Aristotle in his writings made note of this in hyenas and dogs.

Now in these same-sex relationships the individual animals and indeed in studies of homesexual human relationships, they show exactly the same ability to parent as a normal heterosexual couple, and the child shows none of the supposed 'ill-effects' that many religious people claim are caused by a child being brought up with two same-sex parents and can form healthy sexual relationships themselves in later life.
Now my theory is that the existence of such couples, is a contingency plan built into Nature to ensure that those children who lose their parents (in our earliest days, the risk of death of one of the parents was VERY high). And so homosexual couples are the product of evolution: a kind of cosmic godparents who can care for and raise orphaned children. It's an irony that this is (to me at least) an element of design which the religious ignore in their theories of design.

Also think of this: why do modern societies divide sexuality by gender? It's little different to dividing sexual preferences by hair color. I've yet to hear a GOOD argument as to why gender is different to any other division of sexual preference and why it should be the defining one. Fact is that the human sexual organs are designed to be stimulated somehow, and it doesn't matter how this is done, it will give the same pleasure and stimulate the same biological response (hormonal and all that).

Add this to the argument I made in the first paragraph and it seems ridiculous to be 'against' homosexuality. Human sexuality is highly complex and there's no such thing as definite sexualities and definite sexual labels.

And yes, I happen to be bisexual. So this is a bit of a hot topic for me...

A trait such as homosexual behaviour could not have evolved the way you imagine. The reason is that being a godparent to unrelated children has no fitness benefit. Generally, evolution rewards the animals that are good at perpetuating their genes for the next generations, something which is typically achieved by having children. The more "fit" the parents are (could mean stronger, more attractive, good at finding food etc.), the more children they will have on average. These children have the genes of their parents. However, caring for others children has no fitness benefits. You are spending your energy helping someone else's genes surviving, not your own. Hence, such a behaviour is not in itself adaptive and could not have evolved. Simply put, the gay animals would not be perpetuating their genes by helping orphans.

Also, I see you also use the word design. Design in nature is generally just wishful thinking. Nature is the result of a long chain of cause and consequence, not design. Evolutionary theory and the idea that nature is designed are generally incompatible!

The last study I saw on homosexuality claimed to have discovered that genes that commonly cause homosexuality in men cause women to be more fertile. That means that if you are a mother and have those genes, your daughters who inherit those genes would have more children on average than women who do not have those genes. This is where the fitness benefit comes from which potentially explains why the trait is adaptive - why it has evolved. However, male children who inherit those genes may become gay.

I read this as well. Fascinating stuff.

I still like to think of it as being double jointed, or having an extra row of teeth, or two different coloured eyes; just a random genetic mutation.

LOL. Wait, what?

Could be true. Why not?

If homosexuality was purely a random trait caused by an error in meiosis or something similar, so many people across the world would not share the trait. If you read my last post, you can see I write about one possible explanation for male homosexuality which has gained scientific weight.

It's nice to see people have ideas and hypotheses on why homosexuality is here, but without proper knowledge of evolution, it's likely to be incorrect. :p:

It always troubles me a wee bit when a discussion of sexuality comes down to genetics as I'm troubled by biologism in general. The approach seems subject to being overly deterministic, subject to marginalizing other significant factors (I'm more a social constructionist in this sense), and tends to gloss over the fact that the act of scientific discovery itself isn't entirely objective or outside the reach of sociocultural interpretation.

To wit, if a series of genes were isolated as being a high indicator for homosexuality, could there not be people who engage in homosexual behavior or identify with the associated culture who don't have those genes? And if such people were to exist, would they be somehow "less" gay? Who's qualified to make that determination? Etc.

To be clear, I'm not ruling out a biological component in the formation of sexuality, nor the importance of that component in shaping a society that is--for better or worse--biologistically minded. It's just a statement like that (the quoted one) strikes me as dangerous because it plays to an oversimplification of human behavior along one axis, which is always open to exploitation.

I think this is the first time someone said "to wit" on musicbanter. I'm in love. <3

Carry on. *totally constructive contribution*

It depends on what the goal of that explanation is. Whenever its political I always gun for the most irrefutable and direct reasoning. In America, if you leave breathing room, the homophobic will suck all the air out.

But for intellectual directions, you're likely right unless we can say genres have levels of expression. The problem often is a punnentt square doesn't.