Homosexuality, the natural choice? (Gay Animals are Common)

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I'll hazard a guess that pre-civilized humans, in their tribal organizations, did not have gay sex, but I have nothing to support my speculation.

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Probably a bad guess, seeing that there have been (and probably still are in the areas that have not yet been saturated by Christian or Muslim missionaries) lots of "pre-civilized" human societies where pederasty, ritual male homosexuality, and even non-ritual male homosexuality have been an accepted part of the tribal organization.I'm just curious; since you have nothing to support your speculation, what led you to these conclusions?

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I have always preferred, as guides to human action, messy hypothetical imperatives like the Golden Rule, based on negotiation, compromise and general respect, to the Kantian categorical imperatives of absolute righteousness, in whose name we so often murder and maim until we decide that we had followed the wrong instantiation of the right generality. -- Stephen Jay Gould

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I was proceeding on the assumption that male homosexuality was extremely rare in nature, maybe even exclusive to humans. (I tend to see female homosexuality as a different thing.)

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Heh. I think your choice of porn is skewing your view point.-

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I really don't know about gay genes at this point.

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Neither does anyone else, whatever they might think. What relevance animal studies have to such specific human behavior I won't pretend to understand. Especially with animals that are so distantly related to humans.Certainly, any real study of actual human behavior suggests a very complicated picture. Not to disparage human studies; neurology is interesting in its own right, and who can't help but be interested in human sexuality? What makes me cringe, though, is the attempt to bring this into the political arena. Not only are these studies ultimately irrelevant to the current civil rights/civil liberties debate, but by the time what might be carefully nuanced scientific conclusions make it into the public awareness it has pretty much become junk.

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I have always preferred, as guides to human action, messy hypothetical imperatives like the Golden Rule, based on negotiation, compromise and general respect, to the Kantian categorical imperatives of absolute righteousness, in whose name we so often murder and maim until we decide that we had followed the wrong instantiation of the right generality. -- Stephen Jay Gould

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Porn? How so?

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Just a joke, Hoot.-

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Maybe gays are natural. That's why I wondered about gay behavior in other animals. Not being gay myself, I see it as an aberration. Maybe I should accept it as fringe characteristric, like musical savants and dwarfism. I'm still muttering over this issue, trying to keep an over mind.

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While you're muttering, I'll remind our readers that unlike most other animals, humans don't have "natural" behaviors. In particular, humnans don't have "natural" sexual behaviors.Humans seem to have natural desire to live among other humans, and maybe there's a natural desire to have sex with another human being, but even these seem to be few and far between. What behaviors become "natural" and "unnatural" are largely a matter of the culture.

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I have always preferred, as guides to human action, messy hypothetical imperatives like the Golden Rule, based on negotiation, compromise and general respect, to the Kantian categorical imperatives of absolute righteousness, in whose name we so often murder and maim until we decide that we had followed the wrong instantiation of the right generality. -- Stephen Jay Gould

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...and you think we are UNNATURAL, at least in part.

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No, I don't think that at all. Human behavior is neither natural or unnatural. Termites, for example, have natural behavior. Termites don't have to be taught to build nests or feed the queen or rear young or guard the entrance. They just do these things automatically, as part of their programming. Termites are simply organic machines acting according to preset programming. Termites do have behavior that is entirely natural.Humans, on the other hand, have very few, if any, behaviors that are the result of prewired programming. It seems possible, in light of some scientific studies, that some individuals have a biology based predisposition that, when exposed to some sort of environmental stimulus, will more likely result in an individual that is sexually attracted to individuals of the same sex. Just as there are some individuals that, without any biological predisposition whatsoever, will, when exposed to some sort of environmental stimulus, result in an individual that is sexually attracted to individuals of the same sex. And/or there are individuals who have this biological predisposition but, presumably due to the environment that they were exposed to (either prenatally or post-natal socially), did not develop into an individual that is sexually attracted to members of the same sex.If there is one thing that seems clear, especially when observing different cultures and how real individuals actually behave in a given culture, is that humans are not "naturally" anything. If they are naturally anything, then they are natural bisexual polygamists, and the predominance of obligate heterosexual behavior among American males is probably due to cultural conditioning, not because heterosexuality is somehow more "natural" than homosexual behavior.

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I have always preferred, as guides to human action, messy hypothetical imperatives like the Golden Rule, based on negotiation, compromise and general respect, to the Kantian categorical imperatives of absolute righteousness, in whose name we so often murder and maim until we decide that we had followed the wrong instantiation of the right generality. -- Stephen Jay Gould

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But I happen to observe that MOST human behavior is naturally predisposed.

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That is interesting. How do you distinguish between naturally predisposed bahaviors and unnaturally predisposed behaviors, and behaviors that are not predisposed at all?-

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You are going to have a hard time convincing an evolutionary biologist that Homo sapiens had natural ancestors but somehow it became un-natural or a-natural.

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I have no desire to convince anyone of this.-

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...Stephan J. Gould...Richard Lewontin, and many other good biologists would not agree with you.

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Actually, these two individuals would actually agree with me. In fact, Stephan Jay Gould has written entire essays which are the main basis of my posts on this thread. He and Lewontin have been very critical of the kind of hard "biological determinism" that has been espoused in some of the popular press.

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I have always preferred, as guides to human action, messy hypothetical imperatives like the Golden Rule, based on negotiation, compromise and general respect, to the Kantian categorical imperatives of absolute righteousness, in whose name we so often murder and maim until we decide that we had followed the wrong instantiation of the right generality. -- Stephen Jay Gould

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I begin with the null hyopothesis that EVERYTHING about humans and other animals is naturally predisposed. Then I go looking evidence to the contrary.

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What would be evidence to the contrary?-

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Please tell me what is so un-natural or a-nature about human behavior.

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Like I said, human behavior is neither natural or unnatural. The collected essays of the anthropologist Marvin Harris are a good start. Although he doesn't usually dwell on this particular question, the wide variety of human behaviors found in various cultures around the world would seem to speak very much against a large degree of biologically determined behavior; however, I believe he devotes a portion of his book Our Kind in discussing this and showing how little of human behavior can be explained by biological determinism.Let us take the subject of this thread, homosexuality versus heterosexuality. There are examples were homosexual practices were widespread in the societies. Ancient Greek, Japanese samurai, and several African tribes, just off the top of my head, practiced pederasty. There are (or were) groups that found a male who was averse to homosexual sex to be abberant. Unless one believes that "gay" genes and "straight" genes somehow segregate according to ethnicity, this alone should show that sexuality is not biologically determined.-

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Dawkins seems to have won the battle, though, by showing (in "The Extended Phenotype," especially) that genetic determinism accounts for a large part of the evolutionary equation.

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And Stephen Jay Gould showed in The Mismeasure of Man that there is no scientific basis for biological determinism.However, we have come a long way from the days when truth was discovered by clever people "showing" how their positions are correct. Nowadays, we try to understand the world around us through scientific investigations involving observations and falsification of hypotheses.For example, take surveys of sets of American identical twin brothers, one of whom is gay. In half or so of these sets of twins, the other brother is not gay. So much for biological determinism.In fact, I vaguely remember reading about a study that looked at identical twin brothers, fraternal twin brothers, and non-twin brothers, at least one of whom was gay. In examing the proportion of sets of brothers where the other brother was gay, the faternal twins were between that of identical twins and non-twins. The fact that fraternal twins were not identical to non-twins would seem to say something against genetics being the major component. The fact that fraternal twins were not identical to identical twins would seem to be evidence against prenatal environment being the dominant component. (I have no idea, by the way, whether these results have been countered by subsequent studies).All in all, in looking at studies of human behavior, it would appear that sexual orientation is not determined soley by biology, nor that biology is even the single most important factor. If sexual orientation is not predominantly genetic, then evolution has no effect on it, regardless of what Dawkins "showed".

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I have always preferred, as guides to human action, messy hypothetical imperatives like the Golden Rule, based on negotiation, compromise and general respect, to the Kantian categorical imperatives of absolute righteousness, in whose name we so often murder and maim until we decide that we had followed the wrong instantiation of the right generality. -- Stephen Jay Gould

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I begin with the null hyopothesis that EVERYTHING about humans and other animals is naturally predisposed. Then I go looking evidence to the contrary.

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What would be evidence to the contrary?

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You tell me and I'll see if I can find a genetic cuase somewhere.

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Oh, I'm sure that you can explain away any single piece of data. Creationists do that all the time; that's not so hard. The question is whether one can offer a hypothesis that not only explains the bulk of the available data but also offers testable predictions.Sort of like this:If sexual orientation were genetically determined, I would expect that near 100% of identical twins would either be both gay or both not gay. That turns out to be not the case. In fact, if a gay American male has an identical twin, about half the time his twin brother is not gay. Identical twins share identical genomes. One person is gay. Another person is exactly the same genes is not gay. This happens a significant portion of the time. Therefore, sexual orientation is not determined by genetics. At best, sexual orientation is caused by genetics + something else, with the something else be as important or more important than the genetics.Here is another: if human males were "naturally" heterosexual, I would expect that in the vast majority of human societies, homosexuality among males would be at most a minor aberrant occurrence. That is not the case. In a great many societies, homosexual behavior among men is a common occurrence; in fact, among some, obligate heterosexual behavior is considered aberrant.Or another: If human males were "naturally" heterosexual, then I would expect that in most societies, males would avoid homosexual behavior without any expectation that they do so. Again, that is not what we see. In the cases of which I am aware, the societies in which males are exclusively heterosexual have strong taboos against homosexuality and severely punish those who engage in same-sex behavior. One does not impose sanctions against something that no one is doing "naturally" -- one imposes sanctions against something that people would do if they had the opportunity.Homosexuality is no more "unnatural" to the humans species than eating with chopsticks is.

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I have always preferred, as guides to human action, messy hypothetical imperatives like the Golden Rule, based on negotiation, compromise and general respect, to the Kantian categorical imperatives of absolute righteousness, in whose name we so often murder and maim until we decide that we had followed the wrong instantiation of the right generality. -- Stephen Jay Gould

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Well, first off, I'd have to say that the Y chromosome seems to have a lot to do with determining the sex of an individual. Given that, sex seems genetically predetermined to me.

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Well, yes, I would agree that sex, as in biological male versus biological female, is determined, almost exclusively by genetics. But sex, as in the behavior in which the individual actually acts in his or her life, has a very large cultural component.-

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Second, I'd say that environmental stimuli can affect the expressions of genes. Have you taken this into account?

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I would say that this is exactly what I have been saying. Trying to determine which behaviors have a biological component and to what degree the behaviors are determined directly by genetics is extremely difficult because the facts demonstrate that even if any behaviors do have a genetic component, the actual behaviors exhibited by individuals are clearly influenced to a very high degree by factors other than genetics.
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I don't think any organism can do anything or behave in any way that is not somehow coordinated with or otherwise allowed for by gene expression.

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Well, this is self-evident.

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I have always preferred, as guides to human action, messy hypothetical imperatives like the Golden Rule, based on negotiation, compromise and general respect, to the Kantian categorical imperatives of absolute righteousness, in whose name we so often murder and maim until we decide that we had followed the wrong instantiation of the right generality. -- Stephen Jay Gould