GAY GENES? I read an article by Robert Kunzig (Psychology Today) which examines why Evolution hasn't found a way to eradicate homosexuality...
if you think about it, from a purely evolutionary standpoint, Homosexuality doesn't make much sense, because the sole purpose of a species is to pass on their genes.
Before I begin I should prolly state for the record that I am not a homophobe. DUH!
Like many of you I have gay friends and relatives. Despite my blog title I am by nature a raging hetero (HOMO is latin for man) and I believe that being Gay can mean that you are happy or Homosexual or both.
There are charming and tedious Gays just like everyone else and I am supportive of every initiative for Gay people to have children, get married, get divorced, and have the same f*cking problems as everyone else.
To me it is not a huge religious issue or a trendy bandwagon cause, just a fact of life.
Whatever.
After Millenia of experiencing varying levels of acceptance or intolerance by Cultures since the dawn of Civilization, by the twentieth Century, Homosexuality in the Western World was eventually labelled a 'curable' psychological defect by organizations like the AMA...
it was considered nothing more than a state of arrested development caused by a child's exposure to a distant father and/or overbearing mother...
which most of us by now realise isn't true...
no thanks to the Cocaine fueled ramblings of Freud.
So then why, despite the aforementioned evolutionary imperitive for species to reproduce,
are 4% (2-6% is the best scientificky estimate) of Human males, born gay?
According to this article 'IT' isn't purely genetic because in pairs of identical twins it is possible for only one child to be gay...current scientific research suggests that a mutation in more than one gene is responsible.
These Gay Genes are thought to interfere with the masculinization of the brain and when found in lower proportions, as it is throughout 96% males who are heterosexual, these genes may be secretly responsible for developing a larger proportion of so-called 'gay traits';
kinder, gentler, and more nurturing men...
which are the kind of males that females actually prefer when choosing a sperm donor and future father.
One interesting observation was that 'some' of the Gay men had mothers and aunts who had bigger families and more sexual partners (3 to 4X as many) .
This was dubbed the "man-loving" gene and in evolutionary terms, having a lot of children compensated for producing gay children who would not reproduce...
but these 'kinder, gentler' genes would be passed on to more baby boys more often in women with this marker.
Another finding is that the more older brothers a man has, the greater the chances of him being gay? HUH?
Researchers Blanchard and Bogaert suggest that antibodies in a Mother's body are sent to combat the production of a male...and can you blame them?
However subsequent male pregnancies strengthen her immune system and gradually the anti bodies actually interfere with the masculinization of the fetal brain...which would have produced a "typical, aggressive, psychopathic, male".
Nice.
Here are some other quirky findings..
Gay men supposedly;
-have longer , straighter, thicker, penises
-are worse at reading maps, spatial orientation, finding missing objects, and packing their trunks...read into that whatever you like..
and naturally lesbian women are better at these tasks than straight women.
-Gay men are more likely to be lefties or ambidextrous
-the ratio of the lengths of the 2nd to 4th fingers predicts sexual orientation.
So where the hell are they going with this?
My impression is that they are trying to say that...
A. Females are designed to try to stop males from ever being produced in the first place..we know that all vertebrates start out as females so it would stand to reason that God really IS a woman afterall!
B. This predesigned genetic thingamabob eventually leads certain man-loving women (with equally horny sisters) to a modicum of success producing ready-made dishrag husbands with kinder, gentler traits, however the price of this success is that 4% of the time they inadvertently produce Gay, left handed, boys, who may have larger, straighter, penises, but can't read maps or find hidden objects in their poorly, packed, trunks.
Are they on to something or is this just Poppycock?