Subject:
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Re: New poll: sexuality and Lugnet
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 20 Sep 2004 14:45:13 GMT
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Viewed:
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897 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Laswell wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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It seems to me that being heterosexual is the default,
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That’s pretty much proven by evolution, if nothing else. Heterosexual
pairings can produce offspring, but homosexual ones can’t, therefore the
heterosexual lifestyle is self-propogating and the homosexual one isn’t.
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and then something happens (socialization, etc), and some become gay.
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Survival of the species requires diversification, and not all changes are
self-propogating. Homosexuality happens to be one of them.
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I’d like to chime in as a biologist here: there are some situations in which
sexual energy is better spent without a procreative effect. For example, if a
group has limited resources. Sexual interactions among animals are not always
strictly for procreative results. Among bulls, homosexual acts are dominance
demonstrations (and are very common. Typicaly such bulls are actually bi).
Lesbian acts among certain species of monkeys are also well documented, and may
have to do with bonding. Since homosexual behavior exists in a number of species
besides humans, it is extremely likely that there is some survival benefit in
it, otherwise natural selection would have eliminated it. Thus, evolution may
actually ‘prove’ that the ‘default’ sexuality is bisexual.
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There is a great deal of resistance in the scientific community to point to
a “gay gene” as far as I’m aware, so it can’t be inborn entirely.
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Really? Can you cite any sources on that? I’ve got
one that suggests
otherwise (it doesn’t specifically involve gene-tracing, but it does show a
clear physiological difference), so I would think that if there is any
resistence to tracking down a gene or gene sequence that leads to homosexual
tendancies, it would be out of fear that such knowledge would certainly be
abused.
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About the gene: folks, genes are really, really hard to find!!! And then, you
have to have financial support to fund the research to find the gene. We have
the human genome now, but that doesn’t equate to knowing what every gene does,
where every gene is expressed.....I don’t believe there is an ulterior motive
(like the knowledge would be abused), or resistance to finding such a gene. This
is just hard to do. In an era where research funding is being cut and cut, there
are higher priorities, like cancer and AIDS research. How would you prove that a
given gene leads to gayness anyway? Maybe a gene that sorts with gay people is a
result and not a cause of gayness. This is the problem with the observed
physiological brain differences in gay and straight men (and sheep): cause or
effect? Eventually, they will have add the gene and thereby change straight
animals into gay ones, and reciprocally delete the gene from gay animals and
change them to straight, to truly prove a causal relationship.
Cyndi
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: New poll: sexuality and Lugnet
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| (...) Cynthia, can you hypothesize a mechanism by which this might be true? I would have thought that gene replication happens before anything else that might potentially cause gayness. Chris (20 years ago, 20-Sep-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: New poll: sexuality and Lugnet
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| (...) That's pretty much proven by evolution, if nothing else. Heterosexual pairings can produce offspring, but homosexual ones can't, therefore the heterosexual lifestyle is self-propogating and the homosexual one isn't. (...) Survival of the (...) (20 years ago, 20-Sep-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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