So if we ban insulin will that prevent diabetes? Kill me off before I can breed?

Relax, I understand you're talking theoretically. There's big enough holes in the idea to drive a truck through.

What I'm actually pointing out is what you're suggesting proves NOTHING. In my example, before 1921, all Type 1 (or Juvenile if you're old-school like me) diabetics died off within a few years. Very often when they were too young (or too ill) to have or father children. However, the genes also get passed on by your type 2 diabetics (who didn't need insulin to survive and often got the condition after they were done having kids) as well as passed on by non-diabetic carriers of whatever gene(s) cause diabetes.

So basically, you could have genetics that make your kids somewhat more likely to become gay, and they don't necessarily end up gay. Add to that some people with these genes might only end up bisexual, which'd mean they'd be just about as likely as heteros to have kids.

And like diabetes, maybe not all causes ARE genetic. They've been somewhat successfully treating my condition for 80+ years, but still can't say for sure what all causes it.

I think you're reaching.

Is it unfathomable to you that some people just want to understand things better?

Um, no.

We're not talking about "killing people off".

The question is from the scientific perspective: let us assume that "normal" (statistically average) children grow up hetero (or at least, not completely homo), such that they will be likely to breed and pass on their genes. If you're successful in passing on your genes, and your offspring are, and so on, those characteristics associated with your genes tend to start finding their way through the population.

Let's assume for the sake of argument, to keep it simple, that anyone "born gay" does not have heterosexual sex and therefore does not reproduce. How then do "gay genes" get passed on? The passing on of genetic information requires heterosexual copulation.

This is in fact what these kinds of studies are aiming to determine. The role of recessive genes (things that skip a generation) and so on. Clearly something is causing "gayness" to continue to appear in the population, so people are trying to figure this out. I'm not asserting that gays are about to start dying out ... I'm wondering, as a number of scientists have, why that has not happened.

None of this requires, as far as I can tell (and contra mathilde) any necessary postulation of a "hetero gene". It just requires an understanding of what, if anything, happens at the genetic/chromosomal level that influences sexual preference.

Actually, there is mounting evidence that we are predominantly biological in our behaviors. Brain structures and genetics determine to a huge amount how any individual will respond to a given stimuli. Most of the time this is in the form of “predisposition”, I.E. if 10 people are subjected to the same social anomaly (like a specific type of child abuse) one will become a sociopath, one will turn out completely normal and the other eight will fall somewhere in the middle. But even social programming (like abuse, trauma, love) create mapable biological changes in the physical structure of the brain.

The size of the study does bring into question the validity of the results.

Politically correct semantics. We can’t infer anything about the study from this.

That’s an inference based entirely on the perspective of the reader. I see nothing in the article to draw this conclusion.

Genetics doesn’t work that way. There has been homosexuality throughout all of human history, and all of animal history for that matter. But, based on your logic, since Italians from the 16th century also had a predominance for dark hair and dark eyes...then we all should.

True

Inferred again :-)

Because men are biochemically more visually oriented. Therefore we like to see nudity, and we like to see sex. However, the closer to the “hetero” side of the kinsey scale a male gets, the more likely he is to be threatened by seeing another male engaging in sex with a female (threatened in the same way other animals become threatened when another male tries to move in on his harem.)

Therefore, two women are “hot” because it has everything a male likes (sex and female nudity), and none of the threatening factors :-)

Actually, just referencing the article, they said the mother with a smae “X repression” throughout their system only produced 25% “gay” children. Therefore, 75% of their male children would be heterosexual, but 50% of them owuld still (statistically) carry the “gay” gene.

True

True

And inaccurate. :-)

What? Who?

Moreover, any attempt to make sexual preference a purely "cultural phenomenon" is prone to the same inference. In fact, it invites a reactionary response to the supposed "normalising" of homosexuality in our cultures.

We recently had a controversy in Australia when a very well known TV program for kids, "Playschool", had a segment involving a lesbian couple (explained on the show as "two mothers"). Apparently "teaching children" that being gay is OK is still outrageous. And this conservative knee-jerkiness has at its root a gayness-is-something-we-learn paradigm.

(If it was genetic, who would care about whether or not it was on TV?)

Please tell me you are joking with the last sentence of the comment - because I really have no idea what exactly you're trying to get at. Is it that gay professors would take advantage or their students, and if so - is it because they're gay, whereas straight professors wouldn't try to "study" their students because they're straight?

I'm trying not to get worked up over this thread, and am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt and just hope you forgot a winky face or something.

Scientists I'm sure will try to find the "gay" gene just like they previously found a bunch of other genes. A lot of genetic research sort of produces a "so-what" result initially - like when scientists learned how eye color was passed down genetically, but I think the hope is that ultimately this research will help with more important research in the terms of disease and cures.

So yeah. Maybe some day if the "gay" gene is attached with some sort of disease, this research will be relevant. But somehow I doubt that gay is due to a gene. It's just due to who the person is. I mean, I highly doubt that most of our tastes can be accounted for via a gene. But scientists will do what they want.

That's one of the most question-begging statements I can remember seeing.

It's a bit like saying "I don't think humans are clever because we evolved that way. I think we're just clever because we are."

In failure-to-explain-anything terms, it's spectacular.

I'm saying that I don't think gay is attributable to anything that can be pinpointed - not a gene, or the way someone is raised, or due to the culture. It's just a preference, and like most preferences, there's no scientific answer. Sorry to have been unclear. It's like trying to explain why I like the Rolling Stones, or sushi - it's just because I do.

OK then.

But you haven't said why you believe that. It's no more credible than me saying "I believe the moon is made out of cheese" -- but prior to us going there and collecting moonrocks, how could you disprove me?

And you haven't addressed the issue of why people make the choices they make in terms of sexual preference. Particularly the issue raised above in terms of treating it as a voluntary choice -- why have there been so many cases of people feeling lonely, outcast and isolated (even subject to the risk of violence) because of their "choice" to be gay?

Lay off, man, it's her opinion.

No one finds the idea of "fault" being assigned for someone being gay a little insulting?

TheFuckOffKid is so often right.