Just as a distraction from the media obsession about H1N1, here is an interesting report from TIME about the origins of homosexuality.
The article is called "Why Some People Are Gay: Notes (and Clues) from the Animal Kingdom". Only some excerpts are reproduced here. You can read more from the original article.
"We have known for at least a decade that hundreds of animal species — including birds, reptiles, mollusks and, of course, humans — engage in same-gender sexual acts. But no one is quite sure why. After all, same-sex couplings don't usually result in offspring. (I say usually because when male marine snails pair with other males, one partner conveniently changes sex, allowing for reproduction.) Evolutionarily speaking, homosexuality should have disappeared long ago.
A yearlong study just completed at the University of California at Riverside offers several fascinating competing theories about why same-gender sexual behavior has endured. And although it's gay-pride month — and the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots that sparked the gay-rights movement — not all the theories will give same-gender-loving humans a reason to celebrate.
What all these theories have in common is that same-sex sexual activity is either an accident or a quirky genetic method of helping males impregnate females. Which raises the evolutionary question of why men and women who are exclusive gay and lesbian exist. One answer is that exclusive gays and lesbians are a relatively new creation: the concept of exclusive homosexuality barely existed before modernity; even a century ago, most same-sex-attracted men and women got married and had kids."
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5 comments:
"Evolutionarily speaking, homosexuality should have disappeared long ago.
"
In this, amongst others, is evidence that, in part, that evolution is a product of human imagination, and hence, can also serve to toss a spanner in the machinery of evolution.
Haha...well, that's one way of looking at it...
One could then say it was 'created' by God.
Or a conceived of man's 'sin'.
Hi, regarding homosexuality and evolution, there was a study which suggested that the homosexual trait is linked to female fertility. It was found that women tend to have more children when they inherit the same genetic factors linked to homosexuality in men. In this way, the homosexual trait still persists generation after generation even though gay men do not father children, because it is inherited from mothers.
Link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6519-survival-of-genetic-homosexual-traits-explained.html
So there really isn't a conflict between evolution and the concept of "natural" homoxsexuality.
That's an interesting study. I think the problem with many of these studies is that the definition of homosexuality is somewhat imprecise. For example, there are gender conforming and gender non-conforming roles, transgenders and then there are those in it just for kinky sex.
Ed:
""Evolutionarily speaking, homosexuality should have disappeared long ago.
"
In this, amongst others, is evidence that, in part, that evolution is a product of human imagination, and hence, can also serve to toss a spanner in the machinery of evolution."
Have you read the linked TIME article? Because then you will surely have come upon studies that favour the theory of evolution.
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