Is homosexuality unnatural?

[Hasanuddin]

True, many within society live their lives with as much care as your typical drone or infertile worker. That is very true; some lives appear hardly worth living. To the absolute cynic there is no difference between man and termite. The passing of another human, might seem unimportant as the death of a termite, to these callous few. Even the most famous of the famous of humans (after a couple decades) are as memorable as any individual worker killed when spraying the swarm with insecticide. True all very true. But these are philosophical and metaphysical questions—not scientific ones. Personally I believe that all humans matter, and that because we are sapient and because we possess control over our actions (utilized or not), we therefore matter much more than any lower life form.

 

Truly, how can you both ask:

I'd also challenge you to explain for all of us just how precisely you think human groupings are "different" than swarms of bees, ants, or termites,

 

When this question posed is it suggested that there are gay termites? That would be an interesting paper to read. I guess with that one question, i.e., bringing things back to the topic sinks your ship. How can you claim that termites are the same as humans when termites do not have documented gay members. For that matter, in a society of infertile semi-clone automatons… do they even have straight sex? Do the drones sneak off with attractive workers? Are the workers?

 

As far as the second part of the question in concerned

… and how cloning has anything whatsoever to do with societal groupings.

The question goes back to sex again. Do clones have sex within a hive? If a clone has sex with another would it be called gay sex or masterbation? But then comes the other problem with linking a clone-network with human society. Are humans automatom clones? Again, another philosophical question. To the absolute cynic, we are all expendable, interchangeable, and of minimal worth. Although I too believe these things to be true (just look at my signature) I also believe that we each contain our own individual, unique, and important contribution to the overall metaphysical life-matrix. Regardless, because of both sex (or lack of) and metaphysical potential termite society/individuals do not align.

[Michaelangelica]

Certainly gay bees who dance with others

[InfiniteNow]

When this question posed is it suggested that there are gay termites? That would be an interesting paper to read.

 

No. Your response completely ignores the context in which the comment was made. You suggested that humans were different than all other animals because we have societies. This was shown false by use of examples. You then conceded that these animals had societies, but that they were different because they were clones. You were then asked how cloning has any relevance to the concept of societal grouping.

 

How you go from that to asking whether I intended to suggest there were gay termites is absolutely beyond me.

[Larv]

Certainly gay bees who dance with others

Technically speaking, worker bees are the ones who do the dancing, and they are females. So, in the case of bee hives, worker bees are the ersatz lesbians who care more about socializing and less about reproducing. Furthermore, I've never heard of sex occurring between two worker bees, maybe because they're too busy working . (Personally, I'd rather be a male drone who lops around the hive all day and mates endlessly with the queen.)

[Hasanuddin]

Sorry to tell you Larv, but you're going to be a pretty hard-up little drone. Though you might fantasize about lazy days hanging around the hive doing nothing but bopping with the queen, but that is not the case. The queen only mates in midair, and she only wants to mate with drones from other hives. So basically, your whole life would be spent flying high with your glands ready on search for the chance whiff of a virgin queen. Quite a lot of drones are produced each year to make up for their low probability of finding a virgin queen. However, if you do come across a virgin queen, stand in line… she’s a horny who’. She can do up to 40 drones in one flight out. (Now there’s a queen on the town!) So basically the life of a drone is an endless wandering looking for a virgin for seconds of fun… Being a drone doesn’t sound like a good job to me.

 

(I'd much rather be born a queen, rather than a drone... she gets to go make several sex-flights and still be considered a virgin. The wish of all single queens.)

 

For honey bee queens, multiple mating makes a difference

What's Buzzzin'? Virign Queen Mating Areas and DCAs

 

Back to the original question "Is being gay natural?" To that question I have repeated brought up the notion of codominance. Could it be that the genes leading to the expression of the gay phenotype (a very complex phenotype indicating multiple genes influencing on different level) also have secondary phonotypical displays of an advantageous trait (creativity has bee advanced) that is of ultimate value to society?

[InfiniteNow]

Back to the original question "Is being gay natural?" To that question I have repeated brought up the notion of codominance. Could it be that the genes leading to the expression of the gay phenotype (a very complex phenotype indicating multiple genes influencing on different level) also have secondary phonotypical displays of an advantageous trait (creativity has bee advanced) that is of ultimate value to society?

 

Yes... Absolutely. Many of my earlier contributions to this thread demonstrated exactly that, along with numerous examples of how.

[Miranda]

Back to the original question "Is being gay natural?" To that question I have repeated brought up the notion of codominance. Could it be that the genes leading to the expression of the gay phenotype (a very complex phenotype indicating multiple genes influencing on different level) also have secondary phonotypical displays of an advantageous trait (creativity has bee advanced) that is of ultimate value to society?

Just a side question: are behavioral traits correlated with genetic traits? Is there an 'angry' gene, or an 'outgoing' gene? I didn't think there were but I could be wrong...

[Larv]

Back to the original question "Is being gay natural?" To that question I have repeated brought up the notion of codominance. Could it be that the genes leading to the expression of the gay phenotype (a very complex phenotype indicating multiple genes influencing on different level) also have secondary phonotypical displays of an advantageous trait (creativity has bee advanced) that is of ultimate value to society?

Just a side question: are behavioral traits correlated with genetic traits? Is there an 'angry' gene, or an 'outgoing' gene? I didn't think there were but I could be wrong...

I don't think a gay genotype has ever been identified, so this makes it tricky to talk about a "gay phenotype."

[InfiniteNow]

To make things clear for our readers, there really don't tend to be single genes for a set of behaviors. There is no "gay gene" or "angry gene." There are collections of genes which all contribute to behaviors, but genetics DO absolutely have a huge influence on behaviors, all the same.

 

Again, I shared much of this information myself already earlier in the thread (specific to homosexuality and genetics).

[Hasanuddin]

Dear InfiniteNow,

 

Let me hone what you just stated, "science has yet to identify an angry gene or a gay gene." That statement is correct. The oversimplification in post 179

There is no "gay gene" or "angry gene."

is incorrect, i.e., not 100% certain by any measure. Actually there is definite suggestion that genes and demeanor are related. All one need do is look at breeds of dogs. Anyone who knows anything about dogs knows that certain breeds have certain temperaments. There is actually a lot of exciting gene research going on right now within and between purebreds.

 

When I started on this thread I brought up the fact that there have been researchers racing to find some sort of gay-gene (or set of genes) for a very long time, e.g:

1]D. H. Hamer et al, "A Linkage Between DNA Markers on the X-chromosome and Male Sexual Orientation," Science (1993), 261, no. 5119, pp. 321-27.

[2]"Research Points Toward a Gay Gene," Wall Street Journal, 16 July 1993.

 

I also entered this thread making the personal prayer that researchers never do “succeed” in the quest of genetically understanding homosexuality. Why? Because if medical procedures can spot this “condition” then the choice to abort could be made based on fear-bias homophobia.

[InfiniteNow]

Please read my post again, Hasan. This time more carefully.

[Hasanuddin]

My apologies, my eyes must have been playing tricks because I totally misread post 179. It turns out I'm in 100% agreement with you.

 

What'd Gilda Radner say as SNL character Emily LaTilla, "Oh, that's different, never mind."

[Cedars]

This topic has been appearing in many forums across the net, most often linked to a short news article. So I have spent a bit of time trying to verify some of the claims.

 

Bonobos (clearly bi-sexual) and some Dolphins (again bi-sexual) aside, an oft used example is the Black Swan and it is connected to a higher survival rate for acquired eggs. This is only true when there are environmental factors, limited territory availability in suitable habitat. If the environmental stress factor is lifted, the success rates of hetero/homo Black swans is virtually equal.

 

From Wiki on black swans:

"Having access to more food the brood have up to ten times the survival rate of a brood with a heterosexual swan couple." What is often left out of the quote is the following first line from the next paragraph:

 

"This situation only holds true as long as a nest and/or a territory is in short supply."

 

What I have not been able to discover is whether these MM swan couplings are also based on female availability in that territory, during the time when these males are looking (being driven to) find a partner.

 

Another set of birds is being tossed about as examples of homosexuality are a couple of types of gull. This one I found particularly amusing:

 

"They found that on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, almost a third of the Laysan albatross population is raised by pairs of two females because of the shortage of males. Through these 'lesbian' unions, Laysan albatross are flourishing. Their existence had been dwindling before the adaptation was noticed."

 

Homosexual behaviour widespread in animals according to new study - Telegraph

 

So I googled Laysan albatross:

 

"This species is classified as Vulnerable owing to a projected rapid decline over three generations (84 years) based on declines in populations at Midway Atoll, French Frigate Shoals and Laysan Island in the late 1990s and early 2000s. More recent data indicate that the breeding population may have rebounded (perhaps because apparent changes in the breeding populations reflected large scale environmental conditions that affected the number of birds that returned to the colonies to nest rather than actual declines in the population). If so, this species would warrant downlisting to Near Threatened."

 

Laysan Albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) - BirdLife species factsheet

 

How did it become vulnerable?

 

The Laysan Albatross, while a common species, has not yet recovered from the wide-scale hunting that happened in the early 1900s,[4] with feather hunters killing many hundreds of thousands, and wiping them out from Wake Island and Johnston Atoll.

 

Laysan Albatross - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Now to the point:

"The population on Oahu has 59% females, probably as a result of female-biased recruitment to this relatively recently formed colony, and Young et al. suggest that the skewed sex ratio has driven the same-sex behavior, with a tendency toward social monogamy fostering its persistence."

 

http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~mzuk/Zuk%20and%20Bailey%202008%20Birds%20gone%20wild.pdf

 

Without looking beyond the telegraph article, one could come to the assumption that FF partnering is the cause of population rebound, rather than the FF partnering is a result of environmental stress (low male to female ratio)

 

Has low male to female ratios been tested? Well, yes, kinda. Several studies removed male chicks from populations and the results recorded higher FF pairings than in colonies which did not have this environmental factor (page 9):

 

http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/18/1/21.pdf

 

So with an environmental stress, we can increase the occurances of FF pairings. Do we consider an environmental stress factor a natural condition?

 

Another interesting snippet from a full article (rather than a snippet produced by a news site):

 

"In the dung fly Hydromyza livens, for example, males have been hypothesized to mount other males to deny them the opportunity to mate, thereby increasing the likelihood that the mounting male obtains more mating opportunities [24]. By contrast, in the viviparous Goodeid fish Girardinichthys multiradiatus, males sometimes display a dark, female-like ‘pregnancy’ spot around their vent. Subordinate males with dark spots attract fewer aggressive maneuvers by dominant males, who appear to mistake them for females and consequently court them [25]."

 

http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~mzuk/Bailey%20and%20Zuk%202009%20Same%20sex%20behaviour.pdf

 

Now is the above homosexual behavior? I think the dung fly example indicates a method to increase its own genetic survival (and further study is needed) before assigning 'homosexual', and the fish example seems clearly a heterosexual male being fooled by a female mimic (which seems to be a heterosexual), but this is not unlike some men who are aghast when they find out the female prostitute they picked up is really a transvestite. But often, these kinds of examples are used as 'evidence homosexuality is normal' in various news clippings.

 

Another mentioned insect (though maybe not in this thread) is the Dragonfly/damselfly (several species). What is often used as a 'possible' indication of homosexual behavior is markings on the males neck, which indicate it has been grasped during courtship.

 

Interesting tidbit of info I learned attending the Bug Festival in June was dragonflies have the ability to scoop out the sperm that has been deposited in the female and then cause the female to seek out this males sperm. This is why the males grab the females around the neck and hold on tightly, to prevent other males from scooping out their sperm. The other part of this is males have two locations for sperm. One in their tail, and the other in their thorax. The male transfers the sperm to the thorax area, and this is where the female reaches up to grab the sperm for herself. Watching this summer as the dragonflies roamed crex, I saw multiple examples of second males just waiting for the first male to lose grip on the female. In the past, I have seen examples of three dragonflies gripped, and now that I know about the sperm scooping/thorax sperm holding area, it makes perfect sense, that the 2nd male (in a trio of three) is hoping the female connects with his thorax in her reaching, rather than the assumption the marks on male dragonfly necks is homosexual dragonfly activity.

[lemit]

The description of dragonfly behavior is fascinating, because I've seen it hundreds of times without knowing what I was seeing.

 

Thanks, Cedars, for an amazing post. I can also imagine a lot of knees starting to jerk but realizing you've left them very little wiggle room--if that works as a mtaphor.

 

--lemit

[Larv]

I know of no one who says that homosexuality is unnatural. Of course, it can also be said that incest, polygamy, bestiality, and cannibalism are just as natural.

[lemit]

I know of no one who says that homosexuality is unnatural. Of course, it can also be said that incest, polygamy, bestiality, and cannibalism are just as natural.

 

I can't speak for other people, but I'm just trying to respond to the thread title, which asks that question. My answer is, probably not. You are right in pointing out that, having passed that barrier, we have not gone anywhere, but that's still the barrier in front of us at the moment.

 

--lemit

 

p.s. If you'd like to meet some of the people who say it is unnatural, I could start a partial list for you. There really are quite a few of them.

[Larv]

I suspect some people confuse "unnatural" with "ungodly." For me personally, homosexuality would be unnatural, because I am naturally heterosexual. And for a homosexual, I suppose heterosexuality would seem unnatural to him or her.