Bad News. Gays are dying out

[meridannight]

Believe it or not Meridan, no one in science is able to answer that question without using words like IF... MAYBE.. IN WHICH CASE... POSSIBLY... COULD BE...

The most recent and credible theory is that it's SOMEHOW related to hormone levels in the womb.... but at the same time the people who are saying this admit that there has to be more to it than hormone levels.

i know. it was a rhetorical question. since he said that homosexuality isn't mainly encoded in the genes, but nobody can say that for sure yet either.

[Virge]

You're late. Fred Phelps died last year, and the tribe of cretins he raised didn't give him a funeral because he somehow pissed them off in his last days.

I meant show up at Roberstson's funeral with signs and bull horns being as obnoxious as Westboro has been in the past. Robertson aproved of them you know. Change it into a FUNeral.

i know. it was a rhetorical question. since he said that homosexuality isn't mainly encoded in the genes, but nobody can say that for sure yet either.

I figured you knew that... but I wanted to jump in before someone took the opportunity to start advancing their pet theory as the true answer to the question.

[ShiftyNJ]

I meant show up at Roberstson's funeral with signs and bull horns being as obnoxious as Westboro has been in the past. Robertson aproved of them you know. Change it into a FUNeral.

Oh I see "to go Westboro" as a verb. In that case, no, it would not be wrong. He's got it coming.

[princealbertofb]

I'm just curious if he meant individual gay people will die out, or was he referring to gay people as a whole? Individually, yes, most of us will die out since we don't "live on" thru our children, but gay people in general aren't going anywhere.

I don't know. Tell that to Michelangelo, to Proust, to Foucault, to Alexander the Great, to Allan Turing , to Virginia Wolf, to Tchaikovski, to Cary Grant, to Pushkin ... (the list goes on). Family reproduction isn't the only human endeavour on this earth.

[princealbertofb]

I meant show up at Roberstson's funeral with signs and bull horns being as obnoxious as Westboro has been in the past. Robertson aproved of them you know. Change it into a FUNeral.



I figured you knew that... but I wanted to jump in before someone took the opportunity to start advancing their pet theory as the true answer to the question.

or a FUN URINAL?

[Eon]

i know. it was a rhetorical question. since he said that homosexuality isn't mainly encoded in the genes, but nobody can say that for sure yet either.

My reply has been added in page 2 of this thread. It looks like all my posts have to be checked before being displayed since I'm new here.

[meridannight]

Of course a lot of homosexuals reproduced and will go on reproducing, but so far in average a homosexual reproduces a lot less than a heterosexual. Homosexuality is a big evolutional disadvantage in that sense. That's why it has been hypothesized that heterosexuals possessing the genes predisposing to homosexuality had a reproduction advantage.

it's not as simple and straightforward as that. for one, it's not only about the survival of the individual. if the survival of the individual was all that was in play here, human race would never have built such a global community and massive societal space. as individuals we'd still be living in isolation from most groups and be concerned with self interest only. it is easy to see how that is less beneficial for the species as whole. human beings have mastered the evolution and succeeded so well that we are starting to overpopulate this planet. this is all due to the presence of a strong social instinct in the species. we are, of course, individuals, but human beings have a very strong instinct for forming social bonds of all kinds and for participating in group dynamics. this is precisely what has made our species thrive.

thus, behaviors, genes, that would support a more social attitude, or attitude more geared toward benefitting groups of individuals, rather than just reproduction of one single individual, appear to have been evolutionarily favored for survival.

how does homosexuality play into this? in a whole lot of ways, which is really too complex and fascinating a subject to research on its own, and too wide to make it all comprehensible in this one single post. it has already been proposed by scientists that homosexuality is related to friendship and social bonds between males in order to keep male aggression toward other males in check. without men socializing with each other, and, at least to a degree, liking other men and forming a bond with them, male aggression toward other males would pretty ruthlessly devastate a population.

it's already been shown to exist in chimpanzees, who also engage in warfare with groups of other chimpanzees. males belonging to the same group form strong bonds with one another – expressed, for example, through mutual grooming, food sharing, forming of alliances – but not with males outside their group. chimpanzees also engage in same-sex behavior, and it has been noted that sex between male chimpanzees is of reconciliatory nature most of the time. in essence, it's make-up sex, following a clash of some sort between males. the defeated male will offer himself to the other to reconcile, or calm the other.

in humans, in ancient Greece, male homosexual relationships were often about a younger male pairing up with an older male, and in turn he received education and training and social benefits from the latter. again, benefiting social cohesion and group to which one belongs as a whole.

so, homosexuality is not, in fact, an evolutionary disadvantage at all. it directly benefits group as a whole, by reinforcing the bonds between males.

it's a huge topic, but for the end of this post i'd like to quote Gilles Herrada, The Missing Myth (and i highly recommend you read the whole book if you are interested in this subject, he explains it very well, and i can't quote the whole book here):

given the dual reality of human evolution, one reaches an unusual conclusion here: human cultural development reflected through the evolution of ethics, science, arts, and spirituality, that we unanimously celebrate as humankind's greatest achievement, is actually a movement away from nature, or more precisely away from the limitations of our biological nature. the magic and the beauty of human psychocultural development resides in its departure from the world of biological contingencies and the shortsighted strategy of instant gratification.

we must then recognize the pivotal role of homosexual behavior and homosexuality in the cultural pull and as an essential component in the evolutionary telos. homosexual love, positively ''against nature'' for it liberates people from the instinctive obligation to reproduce, partakes directly of this movement. human beings are no longer mere breeding machines, unlike most and probably all other animal species on the planet. besides, same-sex behavior has played a key role in maintaining the social cohesion of the group, and the establishment of larger communities were the sine qua non condition to the remarkable social and cultural diversification of the human species.

ultimately, one must admit that not only is homosexual love strikingly congruent with humankind's psychocultural evolutionary pull, but in fact, it largely epitomizes it.

but the recent emergence of more complex consciousness in higher mammals and its blossoming in humans opened a second evolutionary front, primarily based on empathy and group dynamics, which promoted the astonishing cultural development that we see today. … the only reproductive success that counts is that of the whole group and no longer that of each and every individual.

I don't get exactly what you mean by eradicating homosexuality. How would you proceed concretely ?

i wouldn't proceed in any way. but some people already have made attempts:

http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethi...px?id=2976

http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethi...z0sqEoOR95

[Eon]

it's not as simple and straightforward as that. for one, it's not only about the survival of the individual. if the survival of the individual was all that was in play here, human race would never have built such a global community and massive societal space. as individuals we'd still be living in isolation from most groups and be concerned with self interest only. it is easy to see how that is less beneficial for the species as whole. human beings have mastered the evolution and succeeded so well that we are starting to overpopulate this planet. this is all due to the presence of a strong social instinct in the species. we are, of course, individuals, but human beings have a very strong instinct for forming social bonds of all kinds and for participating in group dynamics. this is precisely what has made our species thrive.

thus, behaviors, genes, that would support a more social attitude, or attitude more geared toward benefitting groups of individuals, rather than just reproduction of one single individual, appear to have been evolutionarily favored for survival.

how does homosexuality play into this? in a whole lot of ways, which is really too complex and fascinating a subject to research on its own, and too wide to make it all comprehensible in this one single post. it has already been proposed by scientists that homosexuality is related to friendship and social bonds between males in order to keep male aggression toward other males in check. without men socializing with each other, and, at least to a degree, liking other men and forming a bond with them, male aggression toward other males would pretty ruthlessly devastate a population.

it's already been shown to exist in chimpanzees, who also engage in warfare with groups of other chimpanzees. males belonging to the same group form strong bonds with one another – expressed, for example, through mutual grooming, food sharing, forming of alliances – but not with males outside their group. chimpanzees also engage in same-sex behavior, and it has been noted that sex between male chimpanzees is of reconciliatory nature most of the time. in essence, it's make-up sex, following a clash of some sort between males. the defeated male will offer himself to the other to reconcile, or calm the other.

in humans, in ancient Greece, male homosexual relationships were often about a younger male pairing up with an older male, and in turn he received education and training and social benefits from the latter. again, benefiting social cohesion and group to which one belongs as a whole.

so, homosexuality is not, in fact, an evolutionary disadvantage at all. it directly benefits group as a whole, by reinforcing the bonds between males.

it's a huge topic, but for the end of this post i'd like to quote Gilles Herrada, The Missing Myth (and i highly recommend you read the whole book if you are interested in this subject, he explains it very well, and i can't quote the whole book here):

You are off topic, since I was obviously talking about the survival of the genes aspect of evolution (I even wrote "in that sense"). One may have superior/profitable genes but if this person don't reproduce, its genes won't proliferate. The benefit of reinforcing bonds between males doesn't help at all the survival of the homosexuality genes (even if as a consequence homosexuals were less inclined than heterosexuals to be killed by another man before they reproduce, homosexuals would still reproduce a lot less than heterosexuals).

i wouldn't proceed in any way. but some people already have made attempts:

Then this conserversation will probably go nowhere since I still don't get what you mean by eradicating homosexuality. I only know you don't put "kill homosexuals" in your box "eradicating homosexuality".
One of the only ways (that I can see) what you said would make sense is if what you meant was concretely : whatever their genes and their biological development, all the babies can become homosexuals once adults. The way you formulated it would be farfetched then.

[meridannight]

You are off topic, since I was obviously talking about the survival of the genes aspect of evolution (I even wrote "in that sense"). One may have superior/profitable genes but if this person don't reproduce, its genes won't proliferate. The benefit of reinforcing bonds between males doesn't help at all the survival of the homosexuality genes (even if as a consequence homosexuals were less inclined than heterosexuals to be killed by another man before they reproduce, homosexuals would still reproduce a lot less than heterosexuals).

it's not off topic. like i said, it's not only about the survival of the individual. i was talking about the survival of the genes in that post, what else did you think i was talking about? the benefit of reinforcing bonds between males helps the survival of homosexuality, as well as a group as whole. those groups where such genes are nonexistent/have a lesser prevalence have fewer males and they would be at a disadvantage when coming into conflict with groups that do possess such genes/have a higher prevalence. why do you think the group advantage ever even gets argued by the scientists.

and it has been shown that individual genes sometimes survive in a 'pack'. they might not be viable on their own, but a lot of the times they are expressed with some other genes which may confer a more obvious advantage on their own (not saying it's needed in this case at all) and their survival is directly linked to those genes. this is already known in biology. hammering home the ''one gene needs to reproduce/survive on its own'' is meaningless, and it shows gaps in the understanding of the theory of evolution. there are other mechanisms through which genes survive, other than explicit reproductive advantage (which homosexuality, by the way, directly contributes to from this perspective on its own).

this isn't just one single gene expressing homosexuality (like you seem to be under the impression of), that reproduction is of primary concern. this is genetic/biologic trait/mechanism (something that might come about through an interplay and/or co-dependence of several genes) at the farthest extreme of which homosexuality is expressed. in between it expresses the same yearning/desire for male bond through friendship, alliance, social help, etc. the groups where this is expressed survive longer than the groups where this is not expressed, thus carrying on the genes contributing to it (be it one or many), thus ensuring the survival of those genes. it's directly applicable, i don't understand what's so complicated about this to understand.