Re: OPN LTR TO HEALTHDAY: "GAY GENE FROM MOTHER" ARTICLE


Big Red wrote:
For starters- I'm writing this stuff in the name of biology and
evolution. The modern gay rights movement I know little about (minus
Will and Grace)

Welcome to Biology 101. A lot of people on this forum need it.

"Heard of "recessive" traits? "

Yes by jove I have. Yet, however, traits that prevent your from
reproducing don't survive long in the gene pool.

Again, you are assuming that the individual that the trait is expessed
in is the only individual who carries the gene for it. For example, if
you are right, how to you explain worker ants and bees, who are more
rigidly prevented from reproducing than gays are?

You'll notice thats
why most of the more debaliting diseases aquired through genetic traits
don't prevent the victim from reproducing. Homosexuality is different
because you cannot reproduce if you are gay (meaning you are attracted
to members of the same sex). Closeted homosexuality is a phenoma, but
not enough for the trait to survive in the gene pool. Over the last
2,000 years, were it genetic, it should have been in the process of
purging itself in the gene pool. Clearly, this is not the case. I
suspect that it has little to do with genetics, but rather some trait
aquired through random mutation.

Moving right along

"Addressing only the adaptive solution (and not drift or other possible
explanations) consider who may be carrying the gene. If a female
carries
an allele that tends to produce (especially *some*, but not only) male
homosexual children, she could get benefits that would increase *her*
liklihood of reproductive success. Possible benefits would be: a male
that
would be protective of and helpful to her and her other offspring
independent of her present sexual desirablility or the paternal lineage
of
those other offspring. Other adaptions, including altruism in service
of
genetic relatives, that generally make offspring helpful to parents and
siblings would explain the individual male's behavior. Similar adaptive
explanations would be possible for female offspring. "

Okay- now this is quack science at its finest. Now, the cultural
connotations that are assoicated with homosexuality are not genetic.
They are a product of societal pressure. Gay communities could only
exist in liberal, secular communities (New York, San Fran, ya get the
idea). After World War Two, (in the 1940's and 1950's) if you wanted to
live openly as a gay male, you were limited to North East or Southern
California. The rural mid west and the south were forbidden teritory,
of a sort. If a gay community could have flurished in conservative
parts of the country, they would have been conservative. However,
because their only options for acceptance were liberal states,
politically, gay rights is always associated with the liberal movement.
However, personality is not dictated by sexual orrientation. Typically,
societal pressure makes it happen (their are exceptions, I will admit,
but homosexuality is not one of them).

What? You think homosexuals have only existed since the 1940s? If
there is a gene for homosexuality, it likely evolved before there even
was much in the way of a human culture.

In any case, that doesn't have to do with the question you asked:

Now explain to me again. How do you pass on a gene that prevents
people from reproducing. If homosexuality is genetic- how could it
get in the gene pool when the person who has is attracted to a
partner who will be incapable of reproducing? Your brand of
science seems to be very odd.... Might I reccomend retaking
your biology class?

*If* there is a gene for homosexuality, it can easily survive or even
flourish, just as do the genes for worker ants and bees, because the
individual whose reproductive fitness counts is not necessarily the
individual the trait is expressed in.

--
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------

It is the mark of the marvelous toleration of the Athenians ...
that it wasn't till Socrates turned seventy that they
broke down and forced him to drink poison.

- Isaac Asimov -

.

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