Evolution and homosexuality

Reproduction is an important part of a species, but it is not everything, and not every individual needs to reproduce to keep the species going. Lots of species have family members who don't pair off and reproduce, but instead help take care of the young and generally pitch in to help with things. In some groups only an alpha pair mate.

I think gays evolved to try and cut down on the population. We are populating like roaches.

Uncle Bottom will feel validated.

Wow. No wonder I am the only one my Mother calls to help her when she is in need. I have 3 straight/married brothers and they never get asked to do anything for her. I love my Mom and am happy to help, but sometimes it becomes a little too much.

So basically we're gay so we can be spouseless and take care of our parents?

R5, I think he's got it.

No you're gay so you can nurture the young ones and provide for the tribe when the straights are out hunting mammoths.

Gay people are that extra edge humanity needs to survive: they are the ones who can look after the old folks, take care of the orphaned, work a little later at the office, spend a bit more time trying to solve problems. Someone has to have more on their minds than just feeding the kids.

Rhetoric from a right wing propaganda website in OP's link. Aim higher, OP.

"Urg, remember, you come to my cave when straights go for meat. We rub-rub till they get back".

Paul Manette had this theory in his brilliant book Becoming A Man. I read it years ago and it changed my life. Gays are part of God’s plan, of course. God makes no mistakes, right?

The op article confuses being gay with being effeminate (e.g. as in the "third gender" concepts discussed). There's overlap, but the two are not the same.

Was the AIDS that killed Monette also part of gods's plan?

R9, it's an old theory in anthropology. There is some evidence out there that there are fewer gay people brought up during war times. The theory being that the loss of life will require more reproducing. Kind of like those fish that change sexes when the population needs more males or females. I think being gay is a combination of nature (genetic) and nurture (some sort of situational trigger that allows or tamps down the expression of the genes) and that could lend itself to something like these hypotheses being at least somewhat true.

Another theory is that gays evolved as a kind of throwaway sacrifice. When the tribe were facing a crisis or suffering famine they’d take the gay one as an honoured sacrifice to their animalistic gods. They’d then bash his skull in and cannibalise his body. It’s a real theory by a German anthropologist.

So we should expect more gays now that war is a thing of the past for 99% of us?

How depressing. So we are just a joke after all?

Somebody has to make the cave paintings.

Oh please!

And the idea of gays as a form of population control is dumb too, because there are plenty of infertile straight people.

What a load of crap.

[quote]The fact they also go on to sleep with men is not the only similarity between Fa’afafine and western gay men. “There’s all kinds of traits the two share in common. Both exhibit elevated childhood gender atypical behaviour,

Nope.

[quote]both exhibit elevated childhood cross sex wishes,

Nope.

[quote]both exhibit elevated childhood separation anxiety,

Nope.

[quote]both prefer female-typical occupations in adulthood.”

and Nope.

How does this esteemed British anthropologist explain the hyper-masculine gay culture of, say, Tom of Finland or the leather community, or conversely, so-called lipstick lesbians? It seems like he has some preconceived notions that he just can't let go, or I guess I'm just not *gay* enough.

On the other hand, anthropologists are nerdish bookworms who evolved because someone has to do research while the real men are out hunting and gathering. Or something.

I think we're part of Gaia's response to over-population.

Maybe everyone is gay but in times of strife, nature makes some of them straight...and we've had way too much strife. Look what happens to the world when there are too many straights in it. Overpopulation, lack of food, pollution, war. The gays, nature's balm for the sickness that is the straights.

Human beings are intelligent in many innovative ways echoed throughout the living world (building our own shelters and transport systems, etc.), seemingly more advanced in terms of self-consciousness, but we’re frankly just animals according to instinct. If we were superior to that, then we wouldn’t destroy the environment we depend on for life, we wouldn’t overpopulate, we wouldn’t over-exploit resources. We’re always seeking answers and simultaneously dismissing evidence that doesn’t fit into story paradigms we have built for what our world is. Gay people are just gay. We can investigate why, but we’ll never have a firm answer. It doesn’t fit the strictly scientific, everything-for-genetic-replication model, but neither does all of life. We just dismiss what exists outside of that as “junk,” as with “junk DNA.” It’s all part of life, but we won’t accept it. Gay people are just as much here living our lives as—yes, trans people—and self-replicating hetero families are. Not everything has a straightforward purpose that is easy for us to grasp on our own small terms. Some things are greater. We don’t have to control everything, which is good, because we can’t.

God created them to be priests but they love the altar boys too much.

Gay people are witches who tap into light and dark spiritual energies and temper imbalances in the world. Duh.

I think like R2.

I think gay people are a superior strain of the human species. Straight people know it and despise us for it, hence homophobia and hate exists.

“Overpopulation. It has to get straightened out. We’re overpopulated. The men get feminine, the women get masculine.”

I actually agree with (r25) about the catholic priest thing and "celibacy." I've alwsys thought that the Roman Catholic hierarchy invented the system to use the innate talents of gay men to the best advantage. Even as a devout agnostic, I agree Catholics have the most tasteful visuals.

If gays evolved to limit the population, they're doing a piss poor job of it. They don't tend to adopt because adoption rules are usually more strict than surrogacy rules. So they'll pay a surrogate or ask a friend for a BIG favour and there you go - another child or two on the planet.

Anthopologists and sociologists are none too bright and desperate for attention. It's okay, you can go back to Instagram now.

I have the best taste but the Catholic Church is a close second! You can never have too much gold plated gold!

R24, not everything has a purpose but everything has a cause. Science is the attempt to understand that. Why would anyone argue against science searching for truth? More likely than not being gay is a genetic mutation that has no anti-survival consequences so it's not selected against and stays in the population.

One thing I've considered over the years is that now that being gay is a bit more accepted and gay people don't all marry off and have kids to hide like they did for centuries, if any genetic component to gayness will start to lessen. Some gays and lesbians still have their own children, but I think that number is less than when everyone was pretending to be straight and popping out five kids. If any gay genetic component is a recessive trait, which it would have to be since straight people have been having gay kids forever, then there is more of a chance of it dying out if fewer people with that gene reproduce biologically. We still have the holdover for now of straight people with the recessive gay gene producing gay kids but as generations go on, fewer and fewer straight people will carry that recessive gene. Our very success in achieving a place where we no longer have to hide in pretend straight relationships that produce children almost 100% of the time may be our undoing genetically.

I think it's evolution. But not necessarily population control. Maybe those of us who don't carry the best genes for the future are gently dissuaded from reproducing. It would make sense because often a family has multiple gay members.

I can smell Jordan Peterson.

I’m not generally “proud” to be gay because, I mean, why? But I am proud of one superhero qualty we have: unlike most marginalized groups that someone could get an inkling to wipe out altogether, we can’t be killed off. We just keep popping up unexpectedly in any and every setting like human whack-a-moles. It makes me feel a bit like a superhero species.

Well obviously something in the universe likes us.

I love being gay. But I don't for a second believe that being gay serves an evolutionary purpose. I believe that during a critical period in my gestation, Mother ate too much Red Dragon Cheese and the mating center in my brain became wired to want others who Dialed the Phone with Pencils as children.

Ancient hunters could be gone for weeks looking for food. They needed someone to keep things in order back home.

[quote]So basically we're gay so we can be spouseless and take care of our parents?

And get loads of hot dick in the meantime.

Used to be all the gay people stayed in the closet and had children. A lot of those children inherited the gay gene. I still believe the gene is important to help control the population. It seems the more educated the population, the more accepted gays are...the less children.

I actually tend to believe the fraternal birth order theory. It makes sense that the more children and male children a woman has the more there is a chance for overpopulation and homosexuality just reduces the birthrate in a given community. Homosexuality also isn't just limited to humans, it's prevalent in birds, mammals, even insects.

Wasn't it Stephen Colbert who called homosexuality a "genetic dead end"? I know he was joking------I guess.

[quote]There’s all kinds of traits the two share in common. Both exhibit elevated childhood gender atypical behaviour,

God I hate analyses like that.. How about:

"childhood gender role EXPECTATION atypical behavior".

Without the heteros, gays will become extinct like the Shakers

and after creating some of the most sublime music in western civilization, they (roman catholics) now serve up absolute dreck at their services.

his bullshit theory seems to posit that without cultural "resistance" to stigmas, gays would accept that they are naturally an effeminate "third" gender performing "feminine" support roles in society.

How does Nature know a war is going on?

I dismiss the fraternal birth order theory, the population control theory, and the gay gene theory.

I posit that in the vast majority of cases, male homosexuality is a direct result of the brain being exposed to sufficiently low amounts of testosterone during early gestation.

This theory holds a lot of weight, and explains why homosexuality seems to appear at random, in various populations, at roughly the same rate (3%-5%), pretty consistently. I do not believe homosexuality will ever be “bred out”. It’s something that has existed since the beginning of time, and also is observed in a variety of other species.

There have been numerous studies noting marked similarities between gay male brains and female straight brains in how they both react to male pheromones and interpret data.

This hormone theory is also backed up by simply observing gay men. Many express varying degrees of effeminacy, and have interests more in line with straight females than they do with heterosexual males. Most gay guys, it seems, also prefer the receptive role in sex, as opposed to the insertive role that comes naturally to most straight men.

This isn’t to say gay men are like women in men’s bodies, because they’re clearly not. Gay men and straight men have similarly high sex drives.

But the bottom line is that there are clear and observable inherent differences between straight men and gay men, and I think it all has to do with brain physiology as it relates to how much testosterone a man’s developing brain was exposed to in utero.

[quote]Ancient hunters could be gone for weeks looking for food.

A bunch of men alone in the woods for long stretches of time? Maybe they were the gay ones. They needed the gays to be the hunters while the straight men stayed home.

[quote]...childhood gender role EXPECTATION atypical behavior...

No. The original 'gender atypical' is completely correct. All gender is expectation and has nothing to do with biology. Gender is a societal construct that assigns behaviors to each sex, therefore, nothing but societal expectation. Sex, however, is scientifically definable and immutable. There is an infinite range of gender expression but only two sexes.

Jesus Christ. Look up reciprocal altruism and you were lol see that it has a lot more validity - the alliance formation theory, dependent on bisexuality - than this old gay uncle chestnut.

Seriously, read RC Kirkpatrick 2000. The article is free online.

“will see”, not “were lol”

LAME!

Well, the theory backs up all the nephew threads on DL.

R50, bisexuality (behavior, not identity) exists in 50%+ of a population. Cross-historically, cross-culturally. Your hormone explanation is proximate, not ultimate. Reciprocal altruism is a working FUNCTIONAL explanation.

Here is the RC Kirkpatrick article, which has more empirical backup than Vasey’s helper theory or the “heterozygous advantage” theory.

Gay men and women fit into a continuum, and many (if not most) of us contribute to our society. I don't need to know it down to the Friar Mendel level. I'm quite gay, and I was my parents' caretaker, and if my brother or sister would have had kids, I would have been the best uncle ever. I'm at peace with my role in society. I still try to do various things that support other people..

That Kirkpatrick paper is very long... but I do remember one of my anthro professors arguing against this whole niece / nephew thing. You only share 1/4 of your genetic variation with your nieces and nephews. So, you'd have to raise 5 nieces and nephews for it to be "worth it" to make you gay, evolutionary speaking. It would make more sense (in terms of natural selection) to just have you be straight. I think that was the gist of his argument, but the Kirkpatrick paper is 30 pages so obviously there's more to it (if you don't mind, maybe i'll read it later).

I think sometimes it is easier to just think that being gay is like left-handedness. There doesn't have to be a "reason" and it's not a defect (like left handedness used to be treated too) and it just is what it is.

R56, please provide studies which show that 50% of the population exhibits bisexual behavior. That number seems very high, and not at all in line with the estimates on the incidence of bisexuality within the population of studies I’ve seen.

I do believe that bisexuals (both male and female) vastly outnumber gay men and lesbians, however. But bisexuality doesn’t mean someone is attracted to the same and opposite sex at the same rate. My experience has been that the vast majority of bi people are primarily attracted to the opposite sex, and therefore can have fulfilling straight relationships, and “pass” for being completely heterosexual.

Being gay is not “like” being left-handed, R59. Gayness and left handedness actuality correlate. It’s twice as common among gays as among the general population. That strongly suggests at least a partial biological basis.

It’s probably multifactorial: genes, hormones and who knows what. So we’re not likely to die off.

And I agree with the poster above who speculated that the Catholic Church long ago recognized the empathic quality of certain “affected” boys and men. The Church adopted celibacy as a means of turning the boys’ straight-acting aversion into a “blessing”; and used it as a calling card for young men seeking a life of social acceptance.

I never heard that before r61.... I remember some study on the 2D:4D finger ratio & gay people. All I was trying to say is that I'm not sure it needs some kind of "reason" any more than a left handed person needs a biological reason to exist. They just do.

E.O. Wilson, the famous sociobiologist, believes gays evolved to be family caretakers and there are fewer child deaths in families with gays.

Makes sense as we're the ones caring for our siblings and parents.

R62, I think that finger length thing is lesbians, not gay males. Weirdly, men tend to have a ring finger that's longer than their index finger while women have longer index fingers. They did some study and lesbians' hands tended to have longer ring fingers like males. Not sure if they studied it with gay men.

And most people of the studies you will have read are based on “identity” not behaviour or desire or they studies specialise in monosexuality à la Bailey et al., R60. Heterosexuality and homosexuality are just the outlier far-ends. Of course it’s not evenly divided - as Kirkpatrick argues (and statistically shows), the optimal evolutionary scenario would be the ability to reproduce heterosexually and also reap the benefits of same-sex alliances, which would mean a “mostly heterosexual” trend. We find this strategic bisexuality via homology in all the other great apes (not just bonobos), suggesting shared ancestral behaviour, and we find bisexuality via analogy among other long-living, highly social animals such as corvids and cetaceans.

I’m not a fan of the gay uncle theory, but also wanted to point out that even this is “evolutionarily based” — investing in kin who share 25% of your genes is kin selection, not altruism. Though as someone pointed out above, you would have to support a sibling in having MORE kids than they would have otherwise to make it evolutionarily advantageous (let us say they would have had two anyway — 50% roughly of your genes — you would need to financially or supportively encourage them to have at least three kids — 75% — to make your decision to not have children and support those of your siblings an actual advantage).

I maintain that there is more evidence for reciprocal altruism being the functional cause. Causa ultima is the deep evolutionarily reason that answers the question “for what purpose”; so-called gay genes and hormonal mechanisms (including finger lengths and hair whorls) just let us know that the adaptations are in place. Remember too that most homosexual behaviour is enacted by so-called heterosexuals.

Arguments based on gay people being altruists in the evolutionary sense of foregoing their own reproduction do not align with evolutionary theory because natural selection acts on the individual and such altruistic (in the biological sense, look it up) behaviours could not be selected for. Therefore, a reproductive or survival benefit has to exist to make homosexual behaviour so fucking common. This “functional explanation” is likely reciprocal altruism, which then enables the gene coded bisexual behaviour to be passed down as evolutionarily successful behaviour.

Sorry for all the typos.

Gays often served as shamans or healers therefore they weren't expected to reproduce.

Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare.

It's about cooperation on the hunt. Look for reasons why chimpanzees did NOT become dominant species.

I read somewhere a long while ago that the prostate is positioned where it is (as a pleasure center) in humans> and not apes > as hunter's needed sexual realize while on the hunt.

R8, interesting observation. Yeah, in my experience, gay people generally do work longer hours in the office, are in earlier and stay later.

Well, SOMEONE has to teach straights about style and pizazz. And the proper draining and saucing of pasta, as well as caftans and earrings.

If true I am not living up to my evolutionary responsibilities, nor will I.

I thought this was settled...

Gays are a failsafe when vulnerable populations are exposed to sexually transmitted diseases from outsiders.

Gays evolved so there would always be an appropriate number of people to sit around and discuss "The Harvey Girls".

If homosexuality was to reduce population, wouldn't it be more prevalent in overpopulated areas?

Wouldn't making more people infertile be more effective, since many gays still produce offspring?

I have read some theories that gays were the first shamans of early hunter-gatherer societies and having a perspective on life that differed from most of the people around them gave them certain unique cognitive and emotional skills they used to benefit the communities they lived in. It is questionable whether there is much evidence to support this theory.

R77 its probably true most straight people in early societies were out trying to get as much pussy as they could, in between trying to survive.

[quote]And the idea of gays as a form of population control is dumb too, because there are plenty of infertile straight people.

How does one contradict the other? They can BOTH "serve" as forms of population control.

[quote]How does this esteemed British anthropologist explain the hyper-masculine gay culture of, say, Tom of Finland or the leather community

A lot of that is just overcompensation and fetishization, men using superficial trappings of masculinity to make up for a childhood of feeling un-masculine. See also: motorcycles, moustaches.

R50 = Simon LeVay

Well somebody had to decorate the caves!

R82 And entertainment. Please do not forget the entertainment

I knew Bam-Bam was one of us even as a gayling.

"He found that the grandmothers of the Fa’afafine were indeed better breeders."

Well, at least they have come out of the closet as Breeders instead of just normal.

But are the Fa’afafine having sex? And with who-- otherwise straight men or with each other? And wouldn't that make those men bi?

I think there are multiple reasons both nature and nurture that people turn out gay. But the boys who are clearly gay from birth are different than the ones who figure it out in adolescence.

I also think that today we have a strong either/or approach to being gay along with the whole "suck one cock and you're gay forever" thing. So any nuance in sexual preference gets lost.

The Greeks... That is all.

I call bull shit on that theory. In more crude terms, gays were put here on earth to help take care of their wives babies while they shoot the shit in their man cave? BS.

Explain all the gays in the military before it was legal. Explain all the gays in the Roman army. Or the Spartins who were all men with mostly male companions or lovers. Those gays were not sitting in some villa babysitting for the wifeypoo, they were out killing other men and conquering other lands.

R82, and who can ever forget such classics as "surprise" anal?

Who do you think taught hairy-assed Cro-Magnon women the art of orifice irrigation?

[quote]An interesting theory that gays evolved to perform a caretaker role.

Oh FFS. I'll take care of my garden, that's about it.

...and then sneak over and tend my neighbor's garden because he's kind of old....

I think its safe to say that most gay men tend to be a lot more sympathetic, or sedative to things others don't see. That for me is why so many are creative in so many different fields as well as being the medicine man in some Native American tribes. They see both sides of an issue better, they are open to more possibilities. Some of nurturing could be attributed to that as well, but one could argue gays are here to protect animals more then some straight couples kid who already has someone looking out for them.

We must cultivate our own garden!

Not that all gays are creative, but it does seem to be a strong trait. In my mind bringing art or beauty to the world is not a superficial superfluous act, it's what makes life otherwise unlivable. Imagine a world were everything was purely functional. All architecture and cities exactly the same, all houses a plain box, all cloths in one color, all cars the same design, technology like the iPhone would all be beige plastic.

If you think about it, that extra bit of creative also affects our global economy. Apple just become the first Trillion Dollar company. Believe it our not, they didn't invent most of that stuff, it was already around, we already have smart phones and mp3 players, they just took the leap to make it look beautiful and user friendly. It connected the vast majority of people who were otherwise not tech savvy.

So I think that is what gays contribute to society, a level of creativity that can affect the entire culture that is missing without us. Not some cast off as a part time nanny.

As of yet, there is no gay gene ever discovered. I took a DNA test a while back and that was one of the most common things they were looking for. But fear not, the newest science which you will have to google yourself is called Epigenetics. It's something like the switches that tell a gene what to do. And I believe they are affected from environmental factors as well.

Well, r94, gay men were designed to be supermodels - genetic blueprints against which sloppy straight guys were compared. Women taught straight men sustainable social traits by pointing to the unobtainable supermodels. This helps offset that homicidal/suicidal kill switch so many straight guys seem to possess.

Didn't read the article as the premise seems to be an old familiar evolutionary hypothesis.

But from some of the comments, I might add that the theory posits not just a caretaker rule (gay uncle anyone?) but also to help give the related DNA the greatest competitive edge but not producing ones own offspring but helping the siblings (usually older) children have greatest survival chances.

It doesn't always work out. I dislike my niece and nephew and have nothing to do with their upbringing.

Do you slap them?

I thought it was more biological or genetic - the same genes that make an individual gay actually make our straight siblings more attractive and fertile...hence why the gene keeps perpetuating.

This is fascinating. Is there another forum on the internet where such a discussion takes place? I mean, there are deadly dull intellectual discussions, and there are comment sections full of rants. flames and arguments... but is there anyplace else where a group of anonymous people actually discuss rather intellectual concepts without it descending into pointless disagreement? This is what keeps me coming back to DL time and again. Thank you, all.

This, however, is at the core of anthropological explanations of homosexuality. I agree that Vasey's theory on gays evolving as nurturers (gay uncles) is bunk; and while the expression of hyper-masculinity among gay men that R21 uses to poke holes in Vasey's conjecture is merely an expression of sexual attraction as R80 points out, there is an underlying need to express desire present in the examples both discuss (whether Tom of Finland or motorcycles, which coincidentally — or not — co-exist). Meanwhile, Kirkpatrick's theory that homosexuality exists to strengthen bonds between same-gendered individuals seems somewhat of a letdown as an explanation. Reading his hypothesis was like watching an episode of [italic]The Price is Right[/italic] in which the contestant makes it past the first stage of the game, becomes the sole contestant, wins the first round and is given a choice to take his winnings and go home or a bigger risk... and loses. Sad trombone. Kirkpatrick really has no explanation ("however; social and historical factors also play strong roles"), afterall, does he?

Put another way, did evolution create homosexuality as an escape valve, or does the existence of homosexuality explain evolution... I don't know. I'm distracted by the pool boy at the moment, and can't answer the question.

It’s reckoned that the majority of the male bog bodies were gays. During times of hardship or just the annual sacrifice to the gods the gay members of the tribe would be selected as the one to be killed.

R21 I agree with you but when you point towards something like Tom of Finland as masculine it is laughable. That scene is incredibly inauthentic, it's just butch drag. There is no actual masculinity involved.

First of all the earth is in no way overpopulated. Not even close to it. If human beings had been smart and developed more of the earth's habitable land surface than we have on one would be saying a thing about overpopulation. But as usual we've been stupid and concentrated large populations is relatively small areas all over the globe.

But I completely agree with the population control angle. Just think what the population of the planet would be if homosexuality never existed and all the gays throughout the millennia had been producing children.

[quote]First of all the earth is in no way overpopulated. Not even close to it.

Yes, it is. Where is all this magical habitable land that we aren't using? Is it currently holding trees that allow us to, ya know, breathe? Is it in the desert? The top of mountains? And, where are we going to get all the food to feed all these new people that we can shove into every open space on the planet? How about clean water?

You're an idiot.

No, you're the idiot who clearly knows NOTHING about the geography of the earth. There are vast areas all over the earth that could be made habitable, but haven't and never will be.

Your stupidity is staggering r104.

Well, go ahead and tell us all where they are, R105.

Could you expand on your answer a little, r105. Where is all this “land” you speak of.

The vast majority of the Australian continent is almost virtually uninhabited, but could be made habitable. Russia, China, the Mideast, and other countries have vast areas of almost uninhabited land. But stupid humans have divided up the earth into separately controlled countries so no development will ever happen in these vast areas of emptiness without the okay by the various governments/rulers.

It's not just about land. It's about clean water, clean air, fossil fuels, rare earth metals, etc.

R108 it is way too dry to grow crops in the Mideast, Austrailia, too cold in most of the Russia. Why do you think the US is so successful, it has the majority of the worlds farmland. A large part of the Earth is simply not habitable to humans.

Animals love being gay

R111 aren't most animals technically bisexual. As in only when females aren't present? Do they actually have anal intercourse like humans?

Wouldn't early homosexuals have been in big trouble before modern medicine and condoms, due to STDs?

Water and fuel can be piped in anywhere on earth. The problem is that no one wants to spend the money to make all the vast areas people consider uninhabitable, inhabitable. But if they did want to it could be done and it could end overpopulation.

R108: The Australian continent is basically a giant desert. The interior especially is virtually uninhabitable. There has been some water discovered, but it’s underground and is pumped to the surface at great cost. Furthermore, this underground water source is already beginning to run out. The Arabian desert and large swathes of the Middle East are also uninhabitable due to lack of fertile land and available water. China is one of the most densely populated countries in the entire world and virtually all of their arable land is farmed intensely. As for Siberia, it’s a frozen wasteland for 9 months a year. I suppose it could be exploited but it would take an immense undertaking for little reward.

R113 where to grow all the food to feed them, though? You can't just make farmland with water.

I used to think why not take all the rising sea levels pump it in, desalinate it, and then use where there is shortages. But that would require a vast amount of energy. My personal theory is that there would not be enough available energy in the world to do so.

Male bonobos kiss,perform fellatio, and massage each other's genitals.

Sorry, I meant r105.

Gays occupied a special place in Native American tribes. Called two spirits, many of them were medicine men and some were taken as “wives” by warriors.

AGAIN! Any place that is easily reachable by land transportation can be made habitable. Have you never heard of hydroponics or hot house grow farms? Some of you demonstrate exactly why we're going nowhere. You have vision. You have no ambition. You're willing to sit back and accept whatever you're given or whatever your told.

They know how to do it in The Netherlands.

R119 on a large scale, though to feed billions? It would be extremely expensive. Can you grow large grains like wheat and corn hydroponically. To feed livestock, if not humans?

In addition to the caretaker role, I think being gay allows one to have a different perspective on many things which benefits humanity as a whole, call it the intellectual superiority gene. There is a study that links homosexuality to having higher IQs.

Yes, "populating like roaches" I agree, R2. And in addition, there will be a population explosion like we've never before seen when Roe v Wade is overturned.

It was a VERY different world back then, prior to the early 70s when abortion was illegal. Making it illegal at this point in time, in this world, will be a disaster. However, at this point, it is a reality. If early termination of pregnancy/abortion becomes illegal, there will be a population explosion that will create more issues and problems than we could have imagined.

Sorry OP, slightly off-topic, but had to say that.

R122 that's really an issue in the US. Are abortions even performed in underdeveloped countries where the population is truly exploding? The US population growth would basically be zero without immigration.

Illegal abortions are performed in those countries.

If the gay gene was discovered Republicans would allow abortion in those "special circumstances".

^ True.

in the name of religious freedum

Who gives a shit?! This is a narcissistic topic. Nobody’s special. Go fuck who want... age appropriate, Mr. Spacey.

R128 I actually thought the "cause" of homosexuality would be discovered before gay marriage would be allowed.

R120, populating the interior of Australia wouldn't require anything like hydroponically-grown food, because food can be grown in a more cost-effective location and transported in.

Likewise, nuclear power is cheap enough to make desalination a reasonable option.

The REAL reason why the interior of Australia remains basically unpopulated is simple... developing it would cost more than it's worth right now. Even if you factor nation-state migration limits and current population density of other countries, NO country (with the possible exception of Monaco, and possibly Singapore) is literally devoid of places that COULD be made habitable for far less than the cost of opening up Australia's interior to residential development. Even the Netherlands and India have lots of undeveloped rural land (in fact, the Netherlands abandoned a big chunk of its former plan to transform much of the Zuiderzee into new dry land, in no small part because the Dutch in Amsterdam decided they liked living next to a big inland sea more than they liked the idea of marginally-cheaper residential land to build on). Even SINGAPORE, as crowded as it is, has large areas that are halfway between "vacant lot" and "semi-wilderness".

Or take India for example. One of THEIR big problems is that Mumbai is a peninsula, and all the "nice" parts of Mumbai are at the southern end (where any kind of bridge/tunnel/causeway would have to be as long as the Chunnel. 15 miles southeast of lower Mumbai (across the water) is enough undeveloped open land to build suburbia big and sprawling enough for every Mumbai resident to live in a single-family home on an acre of land.

Ditto for China. Eastern china is crowded, but not really any more crowded overall than the northeastern United States. It's just that until fairly recently, they didn't have the roads & rail network that would allow someone to casually commute 25 miles to work, so people mostly lived in crowded cities with lots of open land between them. China NOW is grappling with the reality that it COULD have the same kind of suburban explosion the US had in the late 20th century... but isn't quite sure whether it WANTS to. Increasingly, India is having to face that reality as well (the thing to remember about India is that it's officially united as one big country, but it's even more federal than the US... in large part because India's states are the modern face of what used to be hundreds of independent kingdoms forcibly cobbled together by the British Empire. They might be used to being one country and now regard it as a settled matter, but they don't necessarily ACT like a united country when it comes to things like road projects and infrastructure.

Long story short, the only part of Australia where there's any serious economic pressure to develop the interior is the area northwest of Sydney. Pretty much everywhere else, it's cheaper to just sprawl horizontally along the coast (or build skyscrapers) than to try leapfrogging over the mountains between the coast and interior.

Are they still making safer nuclear reactors. Fukushima has really killed a lot of interest in nuclear power. That's another worry, more natural disasters = more chances for another one of these to happen.

Gays are superior humans because we go through much more intense introspection at a young age. We then advance the species.

That is, until the millennials came along, who go through no introspection whatsoever and just feel entitled to their specialness.

Gay is over, we are now doomed as a species.

^ Well said. I agree.

R132 wins.

The problem with Fukushima wasn't that the reactors were somehow "dangerous", the problem was that they needed electricity from SOMEWHERE to keep them operating within their design parameters... and due to poor planning and general cost-cutting, that electricity wasn't available (the generators were damaged, the power lines connecting them to Japan's power grid went down, and none of the reactors could generate power).

Compounding the problem, Japan has two independent power grids... one is 220v @ 50hz, and one is 110v @ 60hz... with NO good way to transfer power between them. Basically, the only way to get power from one grid to another is to use electric-powered generators that run from one grid's power and output power for the other grid. If the line frequencies were the same, it would be straightforward, since the power is transmitted in kilovolts or megavolts until the final few hundred feet between the pole and customer ANYWAY. But for various reasons, they couldn't just use 220v @ 60hz, or 110v @ 50hz. Most electronic devices (besides clocks) don't really care... but AC motors DO care, and you can't discount the role of circuits that use the line frequency as a timing source (most plug-in digital clocks , for instance, have used AC line frequency as their reference for literally DECADES... and more than a few industrial timing-control circuits do, too).

Basically, what happened in Japan was the perfect shitstorm between corporate greed, regulators asleep at the wheel, and a historical voltage dividing line that can't easily be changed. Brazil has the same problem, but even worse, because THERE it's not even regionally-consistent (at least in Japan, 220v/50hz and 110v/60hz use different plugs, though some people illegally install outlets that can take plugs of either type). In Brazil, there's a standard plug that nobody uses, and standard plugs for 110v and 220v that are used without regard to which one is SUPPOSED to be used for a given voltage (ie, you'll have people who install American-style outlets on 220v lines, people who install Europlug-style outlets on 110v lines, and even MORE people who install Asian-type "universal" plugs that can take almost anything (often, exposing live voltage to small kids due to their HUGE holes and non-recessed contacts).

To the ignorant ass arguing for filling the entire planet with as many humans as possible, please familiarize yourself with the J-curve of population growth and its ultimate outcome. You know, actual science rather than the bullshit you keep spewing. You also might want to look into population density as it relates to epidemiology.

Can the nuclear reactors in Florida, for example, withstand one of these super hurricanes we had last summer?

Are we going to talk about Calhoun's mice/rat utopias and behavioral sink?

....

....

So, you're just admitting you're an idiot by countering current science with the bullshit from the 60s that popped up when you googled "population density no effect on humans" to desperately try to prove yourself right? Did you look up the population curves? Epidemiology? Common fucking sense? Go read the million studies published later than 1960, you moron.

No, r141.

No, what? No, you haven't bothered to look at science since 1960? You couldn't be bothered to look up epidemiology or the J-curve? No, you couldn't be bothered with common sense?

You are no different than the anti-science Repugs and the "Jesus rode the dinosaurs!" loons.

R160, yes, Turkey point's reactors can easily withstand even a direct hit by an EF-5 tornado.

For comparison, Hurricane Andrew's eyewall was basically a 10-mile diameter EF3 stovepipe tornado that spawned thousands of additional tornadoes along its circumference. It's hard to describe for anybody who didn't get to see its aftermath in person, but the TYPE of damage seen in southern Dade County as you drove south along US-1 changed PROFOUNDLY within the span of a few blocks between SW 72nd Street and SW 88th Street. It was bad everywhere south of approximately SW 24th Street, but right around SW 80th Street, it suddenly went from "bad" to "oh my FUCKING GOD" bad... and stayed like that until you were almost in Key Largo (where it went back to being merely "really, really bad").

That said, a major hurricane would likely take Turkey Point out of action for at least 6 months to a year. The REACTORS might be hardened to survive an EF-5 tornado (and implicitly, a category 5 hurricane or EF-3 tornado), but the transmission lines that actually carry power away from it absolutely are NOT, nor are the support buildings (the offices, main control rooms, etc). There's a hardened bunker with enough redundant controls to safely shut down the reactors and keep them safely offline, but they really can't operate the reactors in full service from in there.

South Florida's power situation would be OK if a hurricane knocked Turkey Point offline for a year, but ONLY Turkey Point... but South Florida would be utterly FUCKED if an active hurricane season with multiple landfalling hurricanes took BOTH of Florida's nuclear power plants offline for an extended period of time, or if one hurricane took Turkey Point offline & another one shredded the transmission lines further north. If Turkey Point goes offline, basically the entire output of FPL's nuclear plants in Port St. Lucie would be used to power South Florida, and Central Florida's power would come from just about every power plant with surplus capacity south of Tennessee and east of the Mississippi River. If, however, BOTH Turkey Point AND Port St. Lucie were forced offline , the transmission grid in Northern Florida doesn't have the CAPACITY to supply 100% of Central AND South Florida's power demands from plants out of state, and FPL's gas-fired plants only have enough capacity to handle surge demand.

^--- oops, that should have been a reply to R137, not the as-yet nonexistent R160.

When do we get to talk about gay things?

The author of r144 knows those things because he fucked a hot engineer who was one of the guys responsible for the installation of one of Turkey Point's new reactors a couple of years ago. Gay enough?

LOL R147

I think the overpopulation issue is an intuitive one, you either feel it or you don't. You can't "prove" it with data, because people can always rely on human ingenuity to 'solve' potential resource and epidemiological problems. Decline in biodiversity perhaps comes closest, but it's impossible to prove with absolute certainty that the current episode is anthropogenic, and further, whether biodiversity is in itself a good thing is a question of values.

Hubris

Hummus

This is thread is so intellectually stimulating!

bump

I will get blasted for bringing her up, but Camille Paglia argued in her book "Sexual Personae" that homosexuals were needed to further strengthen the ties of patriarchal brotherhood, to assert male dominance over an otherwise feminine-based existence.

For survival purposes, a species needs more females to survive than males. Being that a male can father many, many more children than women can. Isn't that why the males are usually more brightly colored than females, so they can be picked off by predators.

So from a biological standpoint, even if only a small percentage of men were straight, a species could still survive. Yet only a small percentage are gay. So her theory doesn't make sense to me.

If we’re so involved then how come our prostates haven’t turnt into cunts yet? I want to bleed every month too! 💉

Excuse me. I meant “Evolved”. And yes......I still want my prostate to turn into a twat.

Because our cunts turned into penises and balls.

I’m the poster who hypothesized that in the vast majority of cases where male homosexuality is evident, it is a direct result of the amount of exposure to prenatal testosterone on a fetal brain.

What isn’t clear is what factors cause a male brain to receive less testosterone during the period of brain development where it would influence sexual orientation.

Nor is why the incidence of homosexuality has remained constant throughout millennia—roughly 3%-5% of the male population, according to the most viable statistics.

[quote]Camille Paglia argued in her book "Sexual Personae" that homosexuals were needed to further strengthen the ties of patriarchal brotherhood

God, that sounds so sexy and erotic to me.

bump