homosexuality not genetic

reply to post by autsse


Just about any animal that reproduces sexually has been documented to display homosexual behavior. That is a fact.

Now, to the only arguement that was presented against this that I feel carries some weight. Someone said that animals display homosexual behavior to show dominance and not desire. As someone with extensive education in wildlife biology, I cannot really come up with a single fact to dispute that.

The closest I can come is my example of the garter snake. The male garter snake will release female phermones and entice other males to have sex with them. This keeps the other males from mating with females. It's a strategy for evolutionary fitness, not desire.

The case of the fruit flies only shows that a gene can cause homosexual behavior. It is not, however, natural. It is a lab created situation.

Why do male dolphins hump other males? Do they like it or are they showing dominance? I don't know. How about you?

reply to post by tamusan


A lot of great apes do it for pleasure. It's hard to imagine how face-to-face penis "fencing" could be one trying to "dominate" the other. Females also do a similar thing by rubbing against each other.

Bonobo's have alot of sexual activity going on in their "societies". The only thing they have not been documented doing is mother-son sex. Bonobos will come upon a new food source and immediately have an orgy. Right now, the thought is that this keeps them from fighting with each other. It is thought (right now), that all the sexual activity is to keep the peace, so to speak. It is not thought that there is any desire involved.

reply to post by tamusan


Right because reproducing and upon finding food are the only times they feel like getting it on.

reply to post by tamusan


I think it might be about bonding, which might increase survival rates. But I don't pretend to have the answers. Just poking around at the evidence. Homosexuality although misunderstood seems to be very important, hence it being so wide spread and having survived this long.

Food for thoughts.

I think they are nearly constant with sexual activity. Again, scientists who study them will tell you that it is to keep the fighting down. Maybe one day they will say something different, but for now they are saying that.

reply to post by Welfhard


all of the traits are there, i know your not a scientist by your style of writing but lemme break it down.

ok so all traits are present however its the degree of their expression present that is unknown. That has yet to be studied and once done yes it can be eliminated. Seeing that these people are irregular which they are is not a negative and their lack of reproduction is not a negative since it is as of yet unknown what other behavioral patterns they have that exhibit a detriment to a new life.

yea and addiction and such will be found working on it now, so next time think before speaking its all in there and people are going to find it!

Originally posted by HulaAnglers

Originally posted by Alesanjin
reply to post by HulaAnglers

 

lol are you serious?? If that isn't a really terrible joke, then, you definetely have something not fully screwed in properly in that head of yours.

Edit to ad that you are quite disrespectful and seem chaotic to me.

[edit on 5-5-2009 by HulaAnglers]

Actually, your broad accusation about something you obviously know nothing about is chaotic and disrespectful. And just how many "gay" people do you know? Must be thousands for such a expansive opinion stated as fact.

And in history before Christianity and the spread of Judaism "gay" wasn't even a term, it just WAS. The Egyptian, Greeks and Romans practiced so called "gay sex" and it wasn't given a second glance, let alone judgment.

It is the patriarchal religions that spread this hate and fear, because those religions were founded by insecure impotent men.

As another poster said, why is this even an issue of debate? We are HUMAN beings with HUMAN traits and HUMAN rights, that no person has the right to lay judgment on pertaining to this issue.

Whether it's genetic or not doesn't matter. It's all a matter of what attracts you. And yes the majority of "gay" are born that way, some maybe not, but most yes. It is innate.






[edit on (5/11/09) by gnosis111]

Originally posted by constantwonder
This post is not an opinion thread or a thread to start a flame war. Acording to evolution and survival of the fittest the weakest are the least likely to propigate the species. eventually leading to a populace that no longer carries the weaker gene form.

According to this principle shouldnt a genetic homosexuality be comletely ruled out?

over the course of human history homosexualtiy has exsisted and there have been alot of generations between the beggining and now. Shouldn't this mean that according to natural selection and the homosexuals inability to create new members of the speciespretty much guarentee that the "gay" jean would have been bred out long before the present?

just a thought

wahts your opinion

CW

Nice statement, only next time try not to make homosexuals sound like they are unable to conceive children or that they are sterile - "Shouldn't this mean that according to natural selection and the homosexuals inability to create new members of the species..." - we are able to conceive children, nothing is wrong with our sperm, the lack of attraction towards the opposite gender diminishes the will for a sexual act which might lead to producing offspring. That's all.

BTW nice thread S & F

Originally posted by tamusan
reply to post by Welfhard

 

I think people are gay for many reasons. There are genetic causes and there are psychological causes. There are also combinations of the two. Some people choose to be gay. Some people cannot make that choice.

At this point in my life, I have come to only be attracted to Asian women. Is that genetic? I doubt it. Is it a choice? I will say that at one point I chose Asian women over other races. Now, I cannot choose, because I cannot be physically excited by a non-asian woman.

I haven't chosen which gender I'm attracted to, on the other hand, i do choose the TYPE of guys i find appealing, for example i would NEVER ever date a guy that has long hair, its just unattractive to me.

But I tend to get really attracted to guys with tanned skin or darker skin color and im mad about goatees,

My point is, neither you, nor i, choose the gender, its innate, but we do choose the TYPE of guy/girl we date.

Originally posted by suzque66
Almost 99% of any homosexuals (man or woman) who I know always claim one thing..

that homosexuality is genetic YET all of them were molested at a young age (usually by someone same sex) and reasoning with them is not possible, they refuse outright to believe that is the cause.

Strangely, not in my case.

And how many do you know? 2? Maybe 3? I can give you a list of at least 50 people that I KNOW that can tell you otherwise.

Originally posted by HulaAnglers
reply to post by Kailassa

 

Now the only thing I have against the gay community is their hatred for the rest of us that do not have an identity problem, and the fact that they are really bitchy!!!
... don't expect any encouragement or endorsement on my part, the "gay" community has lost all credibility to me, and I don't like "groups"
I adore "androgyny" - when it is not corrupted by perversion!!!

Generalizing, are we? Even so ...

Your post pretty much proved why you don't get along with gay people and why they hate you. Just look at your #ing comment, what the hell did you expect!? Cheers and supports? You are calling us a "corrupted, perversion of ?androgyny?", and that we are bitchy, you pretty much nailed it as far as I'm concerned ...

[edit on 11-5-2009 by LyricusMagna]

Originally posted by tamusan
reply to post by autsse

 

Just about any animal that reproduces sexually has been documented to display homosexual behavior. That is a fact.

Now, to the only arguement that was presented against this that I feel carries some weight. Someone said that animals display homosexual behavior to show dominance and not desire. As someone with extensive education in wildlife biology, I cannot really come up with a single fact to dispute that.

The closest I can come is my example of the garter snake. The male garter snake will release female phermones and entice other males to have sex with them. This keeps the other males from mating with females. It's a strategy for evolutionary fitness, not desire.

The case of the fruit flies only shows that a gene can cause homosexual behavior. It is not, however, natural. It is a lab created situation.

Why do male dolphins hump other males? Do they like it or are they showing dominance? I don't know. How about you?

It may be dominance in some cases, but not in all of them. The male-male sex is used a lot in prison also to show dominance, not that every single guy there is homosexual, you know what i mean? The easiest way to break a man is to take his pride (his pride as a heterosexual) and it has been a proven fact that these people after having been humped by other guys tend to be more obedient and less rebellious towards other inmates. This has been also a subject of prison documentaries, some of which i watched on National Geographic. Just my opinion.

Originally posted by titorite

Originally posted by HulaAnglers
The homosexuals female as well as male that I know, were all "initiated" at a very young age by kind and deceitful adults. Pedophiles.

I am glad to know their are other listeners out there. Lord knows I have had way to many folks give me the TMI about their youth. But yeah I too noticed the consistent pattern.

It would be nice if psychologists could get involved and clinically research this... But I wont hold my breath... not as long as their is xanex to pop and paxil to prescribe.

Originally posted by cosmokatt7

Originally posted by Welfhard
reply to post by tamusan

 

But of course allot of people who aren't strictly gay or strait will find that their orientation will shift throughout their lives. I don't think a person can look at someone and decide whether they find that person attractive or not. Can you? I can't.

...Woah! I find that statement extreemly odd...! I most often base my attraction on women, due to their physical attraction...or looks...

I think that is quite "normal"...

...Interesting, that in the 1950's homosexuality was seen as a mental disorder... Now. It (just) a "lifestyle choice"...

... I think gay is a "club" that you have to initiated into...
hidden pretty much until now...deceptive... and negative....
...But that's just my opinion....:

This stupid statements only clarifies the level of their so called intelligence. I have NEVER been a victim of sexual abuse by adults, nor is homosexuality a initiation process, that just the dumbest thing i have ever heard from abyone in my entire life. And im gay for 11 years now, how about that? I think that psychologists could get involved and clinically research YOUR brain pattern and how your minds work, because to me they look a bit messy.


[edit on 11-5-2009 by LyricusMagna]

I still believe as I have learned that DNA and RNA contains the genetic make up of our being.. I have learned at school that your DNA contains the information about the color of hair skin eyes ect and if you are a men or a women .. also it contains the info for making the rest up of your body and also the chemical boundings and reactions in the human brain.
so your genes say who and what you are..
1 you are men or women
2 straight or gay

so if your genes say you are made as a men you are a men but the genes also have the information on how your brains are being put into place and how it works so if the information is as sucht the chemical reaction in the human brain can be different to the info on gender as the chemical reaction in the brain can make the brain more sensitive to the signals , brainwaves sounds and smells of some one of the same gender so that person reacts different to those signals as the straight person, who is made sensetive to the signals ect of the other gender, by the chemical and biological signals and boundings in the brain made possible throught the dna and rna of the genes.

and then we have also have a lot of persons who think they are gay because they are told so often in a period in there life when they had doubt on there sexual prefference that they are gay they went on and started to believe they where gay.

Great theory but it lacks the fact that homosexuals do reproduce. They have children in the normal heterosexual manner. We often think that homosexuals don't breed, but they do. I have seen many gay men and women who seem to have homosexuality in thier DNA, having brothers and sisters who are also gay. Often this is not a product of the enviroment in which they were raised. I think it is nurture AND nature.

Originally posted by HulaAnglers
The homosexuals female as well as male that I know, were all "initiated" at a very young age by kind and deceitful adults. Pedophiles.

Please dont paint me with such a broad brush. I have always known, since being very small, that I am different. What has happened in my life has nothing to do with the fact I am who I am. I have always been.



♥
Dax

Maybe it went down like this.....

Long, long ago, ugly women couldn't find any sexual partners so they started to buff up and then went out and raped the weaker males. They were successful at getting their momentary joy, but were cursed by their weak offspring. Eventually, their weak male offspring couldn't find any willing female sexual partners so they started to buff up (at the Y.M.C.A.) and then they went out to rape the weaker females, which was all of them, and the result was a giant collection of mixed up genetics that has not YET been weeded out. How exactly do we stop the inferior from breeding?

Remember we are working on a cosmic timescale here.

reply to post by THX-1138


The flaw in that theory is that if you buff up, your DNA won't just start coding for buffness by itself. This is comparable to painting a whole load of Zebra white and expecting their offspring to also be white.

DNA mutates and more often that not it produces completely neutral effects, and more rarely, bad effects and more rare still, positive effects. A gene would have to mutate to produce buffness and then be passed on into the genepool.

But the problem with the idea of homosexuality having a genetic root is that (even if it got passed on by not presenting) on average it's frequency in the genepool is going to change, but we don't see that. It's fairly consistent in history and in nature in the 1500 od species it's been witnessed in.

reply to post by tamusan


Well let's put the great apes aside for now and look at penguins instead. I found this news article, which you may find interesting.

Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan, are completely devoted to each other. For nearly six years now, they have been inseparable. They exhibit what in penguin parlance is called ''ecstatic behavior'': that is, they entwine their necks, they vocalize to each other, they have sex. Silo and Roy are, to anthropomorphize a bit, gay penguins. When offered female companionship, they have adamantly refused it. And the females aren't interested in them, either.

At one time, the two seemed so desperate to incubate an egg together that they put a rock in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds of their abdomens, said their chief keeper, Rob Gramzay. Finally, he gave them a fertile egg that needed care to hatch. Things went perfectly. Roy and Silo sat on it for the typical 34 days until a chick, Tango, was born. For the next two and a half months they raised Tango, keeping her warm and feeding her food from their beaks until she could go out into the world on her own. Mr. Gramzay is full of praise for them.

''They did a great job,'' he said. He was standing inside the glassed-in penguin exhibit, where Roy and Silo had just finished lunch. Penguins usually like a swim after they eat, and Silo was in the water. Roy had finished his dip and was up on the beach.

Roy and Silo are hardly unusual. Milou and Squawk, two young males, are also beginning to exhibit courtship behavior, hanging out with each other, billing and bowing. Before them, the Central Park Zoo had Georgey and Mickey, two female Gentoo penguins who tried to incubate eggs together. And Wendell and Cass, a devoted male African penguin pair, live at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island.

Love that dare not squeak its name.

Almost sweet really.

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984

Nature always balances itself out and it usually does it with a multi pronged attack.

Nature does not balance itself. Usually, nature is in a state of imbalance - yet only appears to be balance to us because we don't step back and see the interactions and resource competition on a macroscopic scale across long time frames. Were balance maintained, ecosystems would not change. Yet we know this is not true. Climate shifts, behavioral modifications, evolution, etc. All of these create ever changing dynamic ecosystems that give us the vast and rich diversity we see across the biosphere and in the fossil record.

reply to post by tamusan

Personally, I think it is dangerous if we do isolate a "homosexual" gene or series of contributing genes. There are going to be people who then take it upon themselves to cull that trait from the population.

Not to mention that if homosexuality is still promoted by evolution, it must serve a beneficial purpose. Attempting to remove it would not just be a gross human rights violation, but could weaken the species or subsequent species that draw lineage to us.

Now, to the only arguement that was presented against this that I feel carries some weight. Someone said that animals display homosexual behavior to show dominance and not desire. As someone with extensive education in wildlife biology, I cannot really come up with a single fact to dispute that.

If you're referring to my comments earlier, or someone who based their comments on my arguments, please note that I do not suggest that this is the only mechanism by which homosexuality can be useful to an organism. Think back to the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial, and Kenneth Miller's rebuttal to Michael Behe's Irreducible Complexity. Behe's argument was that the posterior flagellum was so complex that if any part of it was missing or malfunctioned, that it would not work.

This was true. However, it was only true in regards to the use of the flagellum as a means of locomotion. Kenneth Miller described several mechanisms by which continually simplistic versions of the posterior flagellum could be useful to an organism - thus, being passed on and not selected against. As a visual aid, he used a mouse trap. By removing the trigger and the suppression bar, you've made it useless as a mousetrap - however using the base, spring, and hammer you could make a workable tie-clip/paper clip.

Sexual behaviors are extremely complex and dependent on a large number of variables. However, so long as homosexuality provides some beneficial or benign function, it will not be selected against. I think this is what we see in nature wherein some species use homosexuality as a bonding tool, some as establishing dominance, some for distracting other males from females, etc.

I know you probably already realize that, but I just wanted to clear up any apparent confusion there might be on what I was arguing for. I merely wished to stress that within our species and closest relatives, the tendency for homosexuality to be used as a dominance/bonding mechanism would be a viable factor (out of many) to consider when discussing the social phenomena of aversion to male/male couplings.

Why do male dolphins hump other males? Do they like it or are they showing dominance?

I'm not sure, but I do know that dolphins are one of the few species (including humans and chimpanzees) which copulate for pleasure. So to them it may be pure sexual stimulation. However, considering how social an animal dolphins are, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bonding component to it as well.

reply to post by Welfhard

The flaw in that theory is that if you buff up, your DNA won't just start coding for buffness by itself. This is comparable to painting a whole load of Zebra white and expecting their offspring to also be white.

It's called Lamarckian evolution, and you're right. It doesn't occur in nature and hasn't been seriously postulated as a possible mechanism for evolution since shortly after Darwin's publications and the revelation of Mendelian Genetics as the mechanism for that information to be passed down.

Lamarckian evolution may have some small component wherein directed behavioral adaptations pushes a population into a new environment, from which natural selection would take over and promote evolution. However, it would be more of a initial trigger to, not a driver of, evolution.

[edit on 12-5-2009 by Lasheic]

If you have not watched this 60 minutes story about a set of twin boys you should REALLY watch it. I think it reveals a great deal about sexuality and genetic makeup.

Here is a link for it from google movies.

video.google.com...

Here is the same story on youtube

www.youtube.com...

This is an amazing show and I think you will find it interesting also.

reply to post by TurkeyBurgers


Brilliant find, Turkey. It spells it out very well.

Sexuality determined before birth!

Originally posted by HulaAnglers
The homosexuals female as well as male that I know, were all "initiated" at a very young age by kind and deceitful adults. Pedophiles.

That is one of the more morose and myopic statements I have seen here, and to think it got stars reveals where our development as a civil society stands.

According to that logic, as an analogy, if every Christian I knew was involved in a cult, then I would assume all Christians are or will become involved in a cult.

Also it implies that 20% of society is comprised of pedophiles. Shall we lock away 20% of all people?

Really people. Lots of growing left to be done here.