Peter Kirby

I'm not sure what the question is. As if one usually takes a normal route without a psychological environment. You do not end up "normal" if you are raised by wolves in the wilderness. Perhaps that's not what you're asking.

best,
Peter Kirby

tribalbeeyatch

I assume that she was speaking of intrauterine conditions (e.g. hormone levels). That seems to be where much of the research has been pointing.

God Fearing Atheist

Homosexuality is pretty heritable Roland (between 31-74% for men and 27-76% for females), so at least part of the variance is genetic.

OMIM on NLMs website has a great overview of the literature on the biology of homosexuality. Check it out.

PS: On a related note, I found this paper that showed homophobes may indeed be more likely to be closet homosexuals themselves. Innnnteresting...

-GFA

tronvillain

As I do every time, I point out the possibility that at least part of the cause of male homosexuality may be due to "the older siblings pushing the younger siblings out of the nest." That is, in an effort to decrease their potential competition, older male siblings sensitize the mother's immune system to male brain antigens, so when younger siblings are in the womb the mother's immune system inhibits normal masculine brain development.

Another potential explanation is that memes for marriage and reproduction combined with memes against homosexuality have in fact permitted "deleterious" alleles to spread despite the negative impact they could have on reproductive success. If this is the case, then increased acceptance of homosexuality might eventually result in a decrease in its incidence. Yet another explanation is that it is simply a quirk of developmental systems that natural selection is incapable of eliminating or a byproduct of something that has an adaptive function, or it might actually be adaptive itself (producing the occasional offspring not interested in mating and so might stay around to help might actually increase overall reproductive success of the mother). Or some combination of all of the above or even other explanations.

Ihmhi:
Are you capable of showing where he said anything of the sort? If something does not have "the will to procreate" then it will simply be less likely to reproduce and will probably be eliminated by natural selection in the long run, but that does not make it "unnatural."

greyline

This doesn't account for homosexual behaviour in nature - of which there are many examples. Can nature be unnatural? I would think not.

The fact that homosexual behaviour doesn't lead to procreation shouldn't be a factor in whether or not homosexuality is natural, or beneficial to the species (or however you want to define it). Survival of the species is not the be all and end all of humanity. (That's why we have religion! To give meaning to the life we have, not to propogate the species at all costs.)

IMO any means of bonding between humans that does not harm either person is beneficial to society, because relationships in one form or another are what holds society together.

Kruzkal

Nope, genes don't determined who or what you want to have sex with . . . You were equally likely to make love to a omniDog or a teddybear from the day you were born :banghead:.

__________________

On the 7th day
Man created god in his own image

Wyz_sub10

This is pushing towards more of a social/political topic than Science & Skepticism.

For anyone interested in pursuing this line, or similar, interested in pursuing a moral debate, please start a thread in the appropriate forum.

Or let me know and I can move the appropriate posts to that forum.

Wyz_sub10,
S&S Moderator

secular-knight 69

If homosexuality is expressed in the phenotype it has to be implicit in the genotype.

Wounded King

What is that supposed to mean secular? The fact that a person can behave in a certain way doesn't have to be 'implicit in the genotype'.

Do you consider every concievable form of behaviour 'implicit in the genotype' because the genotype effects brain development and neurochemistry?

tribalbeeyatch

Well, a phenotype is the characteristics produced by the interaction of a genome with the environment, so what you say is true. But that obviously doesn't help in distinguishing between the genomic and environmental contributions to a particular behavior. In other words, that homosexuality is a phenotype doesn't rule out environmental factors as being partially or completely causative.