Homosexuality

[Verily]

Not genetic per se, but far more similar to genetics than lifestyle choice (i.e., not wholly [or maybe at all] genetic, influenced by pre-natal conditions, but definitely not a choice nor something that can be controlled by others by controlling childhood environment).

[Verily]

Anyone who claims homosexuality a choice doesn't have a brain. You can't control to what/whom you're attracted to.

Did I ever "choose" to be straight? I don't recall.

Someone who is straight can choose not to engage in heterosexual activity, however.  That person's heterosexual preference does not to be acted upon.

Choosing not to act on your innate sexual preference doesn't remove the sexual desire.

Why do so many people seem to think that heterosexuality/homosexuality/whatever is determined by who you actually have sex with, rather than who you want to have sex with?

some people form their own identities more in terms of their actions than their desires.

TBH, what a person "identifies as" due to social and religious pressure in this respect is totally irrelevant to the discussion.

[Verily]

Anyone who claims homosexuality a choice doesn't have a brain. You can't control to what/whom you're attracted to.

Did I ever "choose" to be straight? I don't recall.

Someone who is straight can choose not to engage in heterosexual activity, however.  That person's heterosexual preference does not to be acted upon.

Choosing not to act on your innate sexual preference doesn't remove the sexual desire.

Why do so many people seem to think that heterosexuality/homosexuality/whatever is determined by who you actually have sex with, rather than who you want to have sex with?

some people form their own identities more in terms of their actions than their desires.

TBH, what a person "identifies as" due to social and religious pressure in this respect is totally irrelevant to the discussion.

It's not irrelevant. It's central. Without identity, a concept of oneself, one cannot say "I am a heterosexual/homosexual"  Is there really an objective standard separate from that to define what someone else is or one isn't?

Yes, there is an objective standard. To whom you are attracted, which is not something that can be changed, although it can be denied. This may not be obvious to the outsider (i.e., one may be "in the closet", maybe even self-closeted), but that doesn't change the objective fact of the situation.

[Verily]

Anyone who claims homosexuality a choice doesn't have a brain. You can't control to what/whom you're attracted to.

Did I ever "choose" to be straight? I don't recall.

Someone who is straight can choose not to engage in heterosexual activity, however.  That person's heterosexual preference does not to be acted upon.

Choosing not to act on your innate sexual preference doesn't remove the sexual desire.

Why do so many people seem to think that heterosexuality/homosexuality/whatever is determined by who you actually have sex with, rather than who you want to have sex with?

some people form their own identities more in terms of their actions than their desires.

TBH, what a person "identifies as" due to social and religious pressure in this respect is totally irrelevant to the discussion.

It's not irrelevant. It's central. Without identity, a concept of oneself, one cannot say "I am a heterosexual/homosexual"  Is there really an objective standard separate from that to define what someone else is or one isn't?

Yes, there is an objective standard. To whom you are attracted, which is not something that can be changed, although it can be denied. This may not be obvious to the outsider (i.e., one may be "in the closet", maybe even self-closeted), but that doesn't change the objective fact of the situation.

But why do you assume that attraction is the central fact of sexual identity? just because you find that the most important thing doesn't mean all people do.

It's the only fact about the situation. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.

[Verily]

Anyone who claims homosexuality a choice doesn't have a brain. You can't control to what/whom you're attracted to.

Did I ever "choose" to be straight? I don't recall.

Someone who is straight can choose not to engage in heterosexual activity, however.  That person's heterosexual preference does not to be acted upon.

Choosing not to act on your innate sexual preference doesn't remove the sexual desire.

Why do so many people seem to think that heterosexuality/homosexuality/whatever is determined by who you actually have sex with, rather than who you want to have sex with?

some people form their own identities more in terms of their actions than their desires.

TBH, what a person "identifies as" due to social and religious pressure in this respect is totally irrelevant to the discussion.

It's not irrelevant. It's central. Without identity, a concept of oneself, one cannot say "I am a heterosexual/homosexual"  Is there really an objective standard separate from that to define what someone else is or one isn't?

Yes, there is an objective standard. To whom you are attracted, which is not something that can be changed, although it can be denied. This may not be obvious to the outsider (i.e., one may be "in the closet", maybe even self-closeted), but that doesn't change the objective fact of the situation.

That's well and good, but how do you objectively measure that?  That's the real problem, and why people often use self-identification instead.

I wouldn't say self-identification isn't useful for measuring the number of out gay, straight, etc. people, but it isn't useful for tallying the entire population because it removes from consideration those who are too oppressed (by social pressure, religion, etc.) to come out.

Realistically, if we're going to be concerned about rights and social justice, we ought to be concerned about the rights of those who are the most oppressed more even than those who are willing/able to come out. So to lump them in with straight people is particularly nefarious. They're the ones most at risk for suicide, for example.

[Verily]

I think, as others have noted that sexual preference could be shaped by environmental forces and it might be congenital, a trait you are born with, but not a genetic one.

One very strong argument against it being genetic is that, if it were, it would not lead to generational survival.  With some level of involvement of the opposite sex, humans cannot reproduce.  Throughout most of human history, that involved a heterosexual act.

Actually, a tribe having some gay men in it helped survival of the clan group, because they increased the survival rate of the young of the tribe by being sort of a social safety net as it were.  That is the theory anyway, and one I find persuasive.  It is very obvious to me that sexual preference along a continuum has a strong genetic component.

How so?

Having "spare" adults to assist in raising the children improves survivability. It fits with the idea that humans and other mammals have adopted the genetic survival strategy of having a low child-adult ratio and investing a lot in each child (compare, say, sea turtles or salmon, which instead having many offspring and invest very little in each child, relying on sheer numbers to continue the genetic line). Actually, it would be interesting to know if homosexuality has ever been documented in such a strength-in-numbers species.

An alternative possibility is that carriers for some genetic causes of homosexuality may be more fertile or have some other evolutionary advantage. (Similar to how carriers for sickle-cell anemia are immune to malaria, and female carriers of red-green colorblindness have greater ability to distinguish colors and better night-vision.) This is particularly strong for the theory that individuals themselves are not genetically homosexual, but their mothers have genes that make them predisposed to have gay children (through unusual womb conditions, etc.).

[Verily]

That is interesting, but the high infant mortality rates should take care of that.

"Take care of"? Who is to say what the ideal child-to-adult ratio is for survival of genes? The point is not simply to have a replacement for the inevitable early parents deaths--it might be better to have twelve adults raising twenty children than ten adults raising those same children.

(Ten adults might result in ten of the children surviving and having offspring, but the addition of two more childless adults might result in fifteen of the children surviving and having offspring--an enormous genetic advantage.)

[Verily]

That is interesting, but the high infant mortality rates should take care of that.

"Take care of"? Who is to say what the ideal child-to-adult ratio is for survival of genes? The point is not simply to have a replacement for the inevitable early parents deaths--it might be better to have twelve adults raising twenty children than ten adults raising those same children.

(Ten adults might result in ten of the children surviving and having offspring, but the addition of two more childless adults might result in fifteen of the children surviving and having offspring--an enormous genetic advantage.)

I would think throughout most of human history, you'd have adults with fewer children because of infant mortality, though I can your point.

Not true at all. Families had a lot more children in the evolutionary past (pre-agriculture). Most did not survive to reproductive age, but that did not mean they weren't being raised.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Yes, it would. We're talking small clan groups--everyone shares a lot of the same genes, some of which would be the genes related to homosexuality (which undoubtedly would be found, recessively carried or otherwise, in the heterosexual as well as homosexual members of the population).

[Verily]

That is interesting, but the high infant mortality rates should take care of that.

"Take care of"? Who is to say what the ideal child-to-adult ratio is for survival of genes? The point is not simply to have a replacement for the inevitable early parents deaths--it might be better to have twelve adults raising twenty children than ten adults raising those same children.

(Ten adults might result in ten of the children surviving and having offspring, but the addition of two more childless adults might result in fifteen of the children surviving and having offspring--an enormous genetic advantage.)

I would think throughout most of human history, you'd have adults with fewer children because of infant mortality, though I can your point.

Not true at all. Families had a lot more children in the evolutionary past (pre-agriculture). Most did not survive to reproductive age, but that did not mean they weren't being raised.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Yes, it would. We're talking small clan groups--everyone shares a lot of the same genes, some of which would be the genes related to homosexuality (which undoubtedly would be found, recessively carried or otherwise, in the heterosexual as well as homosexual members of the population).

First, large families did occur in agricultural environments as well.  The ratio would be important; if a genetic homosexual preference accounted for 10% of the clan, how much of a difference would that make?

I'm ignoring the agricultural period because it is too short to have had much impact on human evolution.

As for the latter question, that's basically impossible to know. It's a hypothesis (and one that's not easy to test). It does not seem an unreasonable proposition that there is an "ideal" adult-child ratio, however.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You seem to have an extremely poor grasp of genetics. One does not need to be phenotypically expressive of a trait to pass down the genes related to that trait.

Sickle cell provides no advantages whatsoever to the person afflicted. In fact, before modern medicine, nearly every person with sickle cell died before reaching sexual maturity and thus had no descendants. The advantages of the sickle cell genes accrue, not to those afflicted, but to the carriers of the sickle cell genes who do not express the trait (because it is recessive). Thus, the genes survive among the carrier-relatives of the sickle cell-afflicted even though those who express the sickle cell phenotype generally do not have direct descendants.

There are two ways this could be true of homosexuality. (1) The genes related to homosexuality could provide direct genetic benefits to the carriers, like sickle cell does. (They might increase fertility, for example.) (2) Alternatively, the genes related to homosexuality could provide indirect benefits to the carriers. (Having homosexual relatives to increase the adult-child ratio might be a biological advantage.)