Darwin and gays, and the BBC

11 Replies to “Darwin and gays, and the BBC”

1. 1
   Jerad says:

   February 22, 2014 at 8:48 am

   I’m curious: how would you account for the presence of homosexuals and homosexual behaviour in many different species over a long period of time?
2. 2
   News says:

   February 22, 2014 at 10:53 am

   Hard to say, may be no fixed definition. Sexual behaviour of any kind can be part of aggression or reducing aggression. Gay behaviour shouldn’t need any special explanation. Narrow theories (selfish gene theory comes to mind) create the need for explanations that fit the theory.
3. 3
   TSErik says:

   February 22, 2014 at 11:13 am

   I’m curious: how would you account for the presence of homosexuals and homosexual behaviour in many different species over a long period of time?

   This is one of the biggest myths out there, and a complete crock.

   http://narth.org/docs/animalmyth.html
4. 4
   vjtorley says:

   February 22, 2014 at 12:39 pm

   Here’s what Professor Jerry Coyne says in his 2011 post, “Evolution, animals, and gay behavior” at http://whyevolutionistrue.word.....-behavior/:

   Can animal studies really inform work on human homosexuality? I’m not an expert in this area, but Mooallem doesn’t paint an optimistic picture. He shows, and I had guessed this, that “gay” behavior in animals (by this I mean “same-sex” sexual behavior) is a grab-bag of diverse phenomena that don’t support a single evolutionary explanation. Some same-sex behavior, such as the occasional tendency of males to mount other males, could simply be a byproduct of a general tendency for males to copulate with anything moving, which is itself adaptive since sperm is cheap. (Some flies, for example, will try to copulate with balls of wax, and some orchids, to gain pollination, have flowers mimicking female bees, with which overstimulated males try to mate). In other cases same-sex behavior may have evolutionary roots, reflecting specific adaptations. Mooallem describes “lesbian” behavior in albatrosses in Hawaii, for instance, in which pairs of females will nest together (sans males) to incubate a single egg. While this behavior isn’t yet understood, it may reflect the advantage of brooding an egg even when you’re not sure it’s yours, just because there’s a dearth of males in the population and it’s better to have half a chance of producing an offspring than no chance at all. In other cases, like the polymorphous sexuality in bonobo chimps, sexual behavior may have been co-opted into forms of social bonding. I wouldn’t expect, for instance, that same-sex mounting in Drosophila would have an evolutionary explanation similar to that of male mammals fellating each other.

   So we shouldn’t hold out a lot of hope that these kinds of studies will shed much illumination on human homosexuality. It may, but I’m not hopeful. For one things, humans have a rich and mercurial culture that is unlike anything seen in animals. Social stigma or conventions can change quite quickly, and this can affect the propensity of same-sex behavior. Was prolific gay behavior in ancient Athens the same thing, biologically, as the behavior of gays in 1930s Chicago? Who knows? (Emphases mine – VJT.)

   And there’s this:

   And, in talking to gay people, I find some who would prefer that human homosexuality be shown to be genetic, so that they won’t be derided for making a supposedly immoral “choice” and can impute their behavior to a genetic imperative. Other gays would prefer a more “nurture-ist” finding, since they envision a kind of pogrom or eugenics program if gay behavior were found to be genetic. And there are those, myself included, who think that the question is irrelevant, since the morality seeing gays as having equal rights does not depend on any genetic or evolutionary basis.
5. 5
   Joe says:

   February 22, 2014 at 1:26 pm

   I’m curious: how would you account for the presence of homosexuals and homosexual behaviour in many different species over a long period of time?

   Entropy, ie degradation of a once very good design.
6. 6
   Joe says:

   February 22, 2014 at 1:27 pm

   How does natural selection explain the survival of the unfit/ unfit behavior?
7. 7
   melvinvines says:

   February 22, 2014 at 4:33 pm

   The Telegraph

   “Being homosexual is mostly based on environment and social factors, according to new research…”

   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sci.....finds.html
8. 8
   Robert Byers says:

   February 23, 2014 at 10:24 pm

   Homosexuality is a medical problem of the thinking. God and nature demands that opposite sexes are sexually only attracted to each other.
   Thats why so few people are gay. its a thinking problem issue.
   there is no homosexuality in the animal kingdom. They easily can be bisexual as wanting sex. Yet never refuse the opposite sex.
   This adds to the conclusion homosexuality is a failure of identity awareness and maybe some slight prompting from chemicals in us. That is failure in some.
   Jesus talked about sexual aberrations but insisted man/woman was the only moral and natural state.
   All gays could become NORMAL if they carefully organized thier thoughts.
   Its really a society fighting the historical contempt and opposition to homosexuality that gets in the way of healing.
9. 9
   Jerad says:

   February 25, 2014 at 4:56 am

   So, no consensus about why homosexuality has existed for millennia under a design paradigm.
10. 10
    Joe says:

    February 25, 2014 at 12:53 pm

    So, no idea about why homosexuality has existed for milenia under a blind watchmaker paradigm. Heck the blind watchmaker paradigm can’t even account for metazoans.
11. 11
    Jerad says:

    February 26, 2014 at 1:13 am

    So, no idea about why homosexuality has existed for milenia under a blind watchmaker paradigm.

    You should try and keep up with some of the research that is being done. People who want to contribute to the science have to know what’s been done and what’s being done.

    Rather than just demand things be brought to your attention why don’t you search out research? In the real world you don’t earn points by intentionally being out of the loop and decrying things you haven’t read or understand. When you fall behind you lose.