Homosexuality

[Qwark]

Goodnightmoon said:

Qwark said:

The basics of evolution is adapting not making something perfect or better. Being gay has no biological upside nor a downside. We have plenty of random genetic disorders, since it's not a perfect system. Nature isn't building a best possible or functioning ecosystem. It's trying to build one which is capable of survival. It's truly quite simple the same counts for albinos. We have plenty of species having an albino variance. Snakes, Mammals, Spiders which also exist for a long time. Even though these have a clear disadvantage in the wild since you can spot them more easily. Yet nature never found out how to erase albinos not even human albino's which are pretty much allergic to sunlight. Which is also a genetic disorder btw severe allergies. 

First of all, There is a huge difference between something as common as the homosexuality and something as rare as being an albino (1 out of 20000 persons), when the anomaly is that rare is harder to be modified by nature and the fact that its so rare is already a hint that evolution doesn't really want it, but homosexuality is very common and we talk about milions of year and several massive extinctions where any disadvantage as common as the homosexuality would have dissapeared but the evolution keeps it at a good number.

The question is that the more studies are made about the subject, the more clear is that there is no apparent disadvantage, you are making a bad comparison here, an albino has a clear disadavantage, they have all kind of skin and visual problems, they get ill easily, homosexuality doesn't make you weaker against nature in any way and you keep your reproductive potential, in fact most animals with homosexual behaviours keep reproducing, including our species, even in ancient greece where homosexuality was the norm they still reproduce, through history homosexuals had families just like everyone, now they are less likely to do so but things like fecundation in vitro exists, and even when they don't reproduce they can still increase the reproductive potential of the species in other ways, there are tons of orphans around the world, homosexual couples that don't reproduce can take care of them increasing their chances in life, some theories says than when a potential is lowered (like the reproductive potential) other potentials may be increased, like social habilities, empathy, intelligence, etc A huge number of great artists and scientifics were gay, who knows if their sexual condition had something to do? Some theories say homosexual men tend to be better making bonds with other men as they tend to be more diplomatic and empathic that the average straight men, who knows if this was the reason of some important alliances in the past? There are many possibilities to explain why evolution does nothing to get rid of it, and still a lot to investigate.

I never said it had a negative effect, I in general doubt the evolutionary benefit of gays. There are indeed 1500 species which show gay or bisexual behaviour. There have been some cases for adoption and other cases, since fay man tend to have less testosterone and more of the friendship and love hormone they are in generally nicer. Where I am disagreeing with you is that evolution serves to make species better, instead of letting them adapt to new situations. Which why we have allergies and all sorts of genetic ills. Evolition has tradeoffs for instance humans and dogs became more intelligent over time. Yet a human can't even give birth alone these days in the Western world. There are always tradeoffs in evolution and. sometimes just rare mutations or mistakes. Whether being gay or rather bisexual is purposely done by evolution or just something that happens in some organisms is a matter for debate. DNA remains a very random thing at times and not everything has a function.

 

OT

We had a gay king in The Netherlands. Willem 2 he wasn't very nice and only gave the Dutch more freedom because he was blackmailed because he was gay.