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[ChairmanPoo]

That's anecdotal evidence, not proper scientific verification.

Sure. It does prove that you can't just logic out through scientific subjects. You have to actually prove what you're saying.

Frumple has it right. It's not that it is expected that every single post be throughly documented and have a full bibliography (mostly because in the end, posts here are quite irrelevant and not worth the effort), but you can't expect to pass a neat idea you just had as proof of anything. Because then -rightfully- we'll tell you that, indeed, you have no proof of that. You don't even have anecdotal

[DJ]

Anecdotal evidence: most gay couples I've seen have no children.

[GlyphGryph]

And I posit that even if no gay person ever had bebbies, whatever combination of genes leads to gay people (much like the combination of genes responsible for Sickle Cell disease) won't necessarily become less frequent, because the proteins they code for may well serve an equally important service elsewhere, or may be overall recessive, and may be caused by multiple things, etc. etc.

Things are complex, natural selection works on averages. If even /most/ gay people have kids, then the amount of benefit those genes provide in some other situation only needs to be very small.

And of course gay /couples/ have no children - welcome to modern society, where not being a gay couple and not having children are both legitimate options. Throughout most of human history, that wasn't really the case. And there are plenty of gay men, really gay, that have still had sex with women such that environmental factors are clearly capable of overriding their desires as far as outcomes are concerned.

[DJ]

Or you know, Occam razor it and assume that genetics aren't the primary factor in sexual orientation. Most personality traits depend more on upbringing than genes, don't see why this would be any different.

I mean, I really don't see why the hypothesis that it's genetic requires no verification while mine position has to be presented as a proper research paper.

[ChairmanPoo]

The crux of the matter is that you don't have enough evidence to make a claim one way or the other.

[DJ]

And yet one way slides by without anyone complaining.

[Solifuge]

Social pressures in many cultures, such as taboos created by law or religion, have kept homosexuals from openly being in homosexual relationships. Such pressures encourage them to take heterosexual spouses, bear children, and so on, despite their natural orientation. Within the last few generations, we've witnessed a gradual shifting to allowing men and women to engage in homosexual relationships.

That said, if the "gay gene" exists, it is my theory that one of the strongest sustaining forces for it may have been the anti-homosexual taboos of the past. Following this line of thought brings one to an unpleasant conclusion; as the taboos of the past are lifted, fewer homosexuals will be under social pressure to engage in heterosexual relationships. As such, fewer homosexuals may directly pass on their genes, leading to a diminished gay population.

Of course, this doesn't mean that all homosexuals will immediately stop having children. I have even known gay couples who discussed having close friends surrogate for them, so they could both have biological children... and who knows what possibilities may open up in the future. Still, if homosexuality is indeed purely genetic, it makes me wonder how recent social changes might impact this.

On a fairly unrelated note: education is key to resolving many social issues. Here's a petition to help further education in impoverished areas, by guaranteeing access to school libraries for all students. It's a small something, but something you can do to help schools and their students ensure more equal access to education for everyone, regardless of their means.

[Truean]

Forgetting gays can still technically have kids via surrogacy, meta evolution exists too.

Its possible to help other people and their kids thus making it easier on them. This help will probably only be given where accepted--to the cool people who are ok with gays, who will then pass on said attitude and accept any gay kids they have.... Technically that influences the gene pool indirectly.

Me teaching my friend Bryan's daughter to write well and perform math well makes her more successful and significantly reduces strain on him and his family. Thus from an evolutionary standpoint, they all have more fitness to survive. Not to mention, he doesn't have to do any of that stuff himself....

[ChairmanPoo]

And yet one way slides by without anyone complaining.

Oh really? Which way is that?

[Vector]

Also, I posit that in the long-term there's no such thing as breeding "just enough", specimens that produce more viable offspring will eventually squeeze out of the ecological niche those that produce less.

That's funny, because somehow we managed to squeeze and endanger just about everything but insects and bacteria, but you'd think bunnies would have screwed their way to victory by now.

That said, if the "gay gene" exists, it is my theory that one of the strongest sustaining forces for it may have been the anti-homosexual taboos of the past. Following this line of thought brings one to an unpleasant conclusion; as the taboos of the past are lifted, fewer homosexuals will be under social pressure to engage in heterosexual relationships. As such, fewer homosexuals may directly pass on their genes, leading to a diminished gay population.

Fewer will also be dead of hate crimes before being forced to procreate and pass on their genetic material.

[Il Palazzo]

@Frumple et al.:
The assumptions DJ made when saying the original statement were:
1.natural selection drives genes hampering procreation rate out of the genome
2.being gay reduces procreation rate(or: gays have less children than heterosexuals)

The first one has been proven true beyond reasonable doubt by the scientific community, the second one appears so obviously true that challenging it seems unreasonable.
As a matter of fact, I'd rather have you show us any data that it isn't so, before I'll change my intuition.

What you're saying, is that we can't use logic to draw conclusions from the two true statements, because science doesn't work that way. I'll have you know that it does. You draw the conclusion - which DJ did - and then compare it with the reality, in our case the prvalence of "the gay gene"(for lack of better word), which tells you not that using logic was wrong, but that there have to be something else that maintains its presence in the genome, or that it's not genetic.

Once again, there is nothing wrong with DJ's approach, natural selection indeed should remove the gay gene from the gene pool. Yet it's still there, so we should look for reasons why it's there.

Also, remember that the processes of natural selection need significantly more time to act than the few thousand years of human civilisation, so using arguments like "social pressure to perform the marital duty" is inappropriate when discussiong the subject.

[Sheb]

Truean: Except of course that fitness in evolutionary terms only means having more copies of your genes in the next generations. Your friend's daughter may well be really successful in life, but if she decide to have only one kid, her evolutionary fitness will be crappy.

Nowadays, gene that get passed around are whatever gene may predispose you to join a fundamentalist church, seeing as they got more kids.

Vector: It's always relative. You might kill off all the rabbits, but the last one to die will be the one that screwed the most (or rather, got the most kids reproducing themselves. Screwing a lot isn't always the best strategy). What he's saying is that the individuals with the best fitness will always tend to squeeze out the individuals with worse fitness in the same species. Of course you need to take in account group selection.

[scriver]

Or we could look at how homosexuality is prevalent among the majority of animals (or, well, mammals at least) and come to the conclusion that if the "homosexual gene" hasn't gone away yet, it probably isn't going to go away for such a long time it's irrelevant.

[G-Flex]

Truean: Except of course that fitness in evolutionary terms only means having more copies of your genes in the next generations.

Not even that, strictly speaking. It could also be interpreted as meaning that gene having a better chance to survive through the next generation. This is not always accomplished through high numbers.

[Jerick]

1.natural selection drives genes hampering procreation rate out of the genome

Proven

2.being gay reduces procreation rate(or: gays have less children than heterosexuals)

Assumed

You can't use assumptions in logic like they're factual statments.
If you build a logical proposition on an assumption (even if true) then the proposition is just as much an assumption.
And assumptions are not valid statments

Also, remember that the processes of natural selection need significantly more time to act than the few thousand years of human civilisation, so using arguments like "social pressure to perform the marital duty" is inappropriate when discussiong the subject.

Human civilisation is only a few thousand, but we've been social creatures since we climbed down from the trees.
A form of society has always existed and many social animals cast out or kill any of their number with a noticeable genetic deviation from them.
I find it impossible to imagine being gay was easier and not something people felt they had to hide back when they were apes with clubs.