[extropy-chat] post on gay marriage (and an apology)

[Evan Hamlin]

I premise this post by saying those who are about to dismiss it as being 
more homophobic propaganda, you may find that I have changed my tune a 
bit...

While I have agreed to stop posting my views on this subject, I feel the 
need to respond to Amara's post.

Amara, I don't understand where you could possibly live, or with what group 
of people shield yourself so as not to be exposed to this view on 
homosexuality. It is, by no means whatsoever, something of the past, not 
even the recent past. By this I don't mean that there is still a group of 
rednecks in Mississippi who believe that homosexuality is a biological 
anomaly, I mean that it also exists in the scientific community. While I 
completely understand your position, I don't understand how you could find 
mine so foreign so as to think that they have been non-existent for over a 
century.

Here for example, is just the quickest thing I could dig up. It is written 
by Gregory Cochran (Physicist and Evolutionary Biologist) this year.

"The existence of a significant fraction of males that show sexual interest 
in other males and no interest in females is just as much an evolutionary 
anomaly as, say, a few percent of that species dying from spontaneous liver 
failure in early life, or jumping off a cliff.

If one in ten thousand men were homosexual, homosexuality would not be an 
evolutionary anomaly. A few genetic diseases are that common. But when, say, 
3 in 100 men are homosexual, it's a huge anomaly.

I should also make clear that failing to mate is not the real anomaly. --[I 
would like to add here that neither is mounting males to show dominance or 
for pleasure, as shown in the Avantguardian's Post, OR EVEN to fall in love 
with someone of the same gender (Harvey Newstrom).]-- The anomaly is failing 
to try. In many species, huge fractions of the young never live to grow up. 
Most seeds never become trees. Most males never get to mate, in some 
species. But they try. They pursue behavioral strategies that work on 
average.

Some birds, in poor conditions or attacked by predators, don't make it south 
for the winter. But damn few fly north! If a few percent of geese flew north 
for the winter, it'd be an evolutionary anomaly, in exactly the same way 
that human homosexuality is."

--Now, I hasten to say that I don't necessarily agree with or believe his 
views (especially the ones on homosexuality being a disease or caused by an 
infection, I can see where some people would find that offensive). As a 
matter of fact, going along with his train of thought, why do some people 
choose chastity?  Perhaps that too has a genetic predisposition; and perhaps 
the desire to be childless does too, at least in some folks. Or perhaps it 
is the beginning of mankind going against the grain of biology, to be 
followed by great, though unnatural, steps in future. The following quote 
from "The Metaphysical Club" by Lewis Menand is very applicable:

"The real lesson of On the Origin of Species for [William] James--the lesson 
on which he based his own major work, The Principles of Psychology 
(1890)--was that natural selection has produced, in human beings, organisms 
gifted with the capacity to make choices incompatible with "the survival of 
the fittest."  There is intelligence in the universe: it is ours.  It was 
our good luck that, somewhere along the way, we acquired minds.  They 
released us from the prison of biology."

It seems to me that there are plenty of people, and couples, heterosexual 
and otherwise, which simply don't have much of a desire to procreate. In 
addition, there are many homosexuals with strong primal urges to procreate.

Personally, I think his underlying assumptions (about sexual preference and 
the Darwinian urge to procreate in gays, lesbians, and heteros) are 
seriously flawed, and that the reality is much more complex and nuanced.

Along the lines of what Avant was saying, there was a study from many years 
ago on populations of Wood Ducks that noted a distinct increase in the 
display of homosexual behavior among wood duck drakes as population density 
increased beyond a certain threshhold.  IIRC the researchers posited that 
this increase was related to stress levels among the population and could 
have an evolutionary benefit in reducing birth rates in overpopulated 
environments.  I also seem to remember that this was also observed in many 
other species. I believe this was out of Scientific American.

What I'd like to make clear to everyone, like Amara and Samantha, is that I 
don't think homosexuals are evil, or even think that homosexuality is wrong. 
I just think it's strange that everyone has accepted something so quickly 
without really pushing for an explanation. I, for one, would like to know 
the reasons behind it.

I would also like the apologize for the below statement, agree that it 
possesses a bigoted tone and represents a closed-minded attitude towards 
homosexuality which is beginning to change thanks to the [understandably] 
strong, but most importantly, logical and reasoned, responses to my original 
post.

Sorry if I have offended anyone; or should I say, sorry to those people who 
I have offended.

-Evan
"To err is human, to forgive divine."


---------------Original Message--------------------------
Evan,

I am not gay and found your messages extremely offensive.

These phrases

>I guess inside I feel that homosexuality should be treated not as a new
>race of people, all of us running with open arms to give them equal
>rights, but as the biological anomaly that it is.

were something from western cultures >100 years ago, thankfully longer
ago than my lifetime. I never would have thought I would encounter
these (bigoted and narrow-minded to a razor's edge) words from a
new person on this list.

Amara

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