Gays, Evolution: Population control, Uncles
Posted by bert5 on 8 February 2009
There is an italian study — Fox News story — which says that female relatives of gays men tended to have more children — are more fertile — than the average female.
I would reason that it makes sense for women who carry a gene for being very fertile might also find benefit to also have a gene for homosexual offspring. This is because it is difficult to provide for families that get very large over just a couple generations which is what would tend to happen if you are very fertile. Obviously, there is benefit for being fertile in that you would tend to propagate your genes easily from relatively fewer matings. In addition, even a single furtive session with a mate with better genes (possibly not the husband) would benefit offspring with increased survivability (perhaps higher testosterone for sons)[1]. On the other hand, there are difficulties in providing for an exponentially growing family. In this case, there is a beneficial impact of a gay offspring in that they could help provide for extended family while not having many or any kids themselves[2]. So, it may be that the fertile gene was only able to survive difficult times such as famines by also developing at the same time a method for effectively reducing the ultimate extended family size. So gayness came about in cooperation with this fertility gene.
One might think there should be evidence that gays help out their extended families if that were the case to prove out this benefit. And indeed, this was done in the South Pacific. Here’s the MSNBC article describing how gay uncles tended to help out their nieces and nephews more than would be expected from looking at single straight uncles. (Is it possible that single straight uncles self-select for dislike of children? I.e. if you’re not desperate enough to get married as a straight [lots of fish in the sea argument], then you probably don’t want children either.)
More recently, geneticists have described how the beneficial effect of increased fertility of a gene linked with increased homosexuality could negate any negative selection caused by the occasional gay offspring.
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[1] Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters by Kanazawa, Miller… (cuckolding)
[2] This reminds me of the 60 minutes interview of Antonio Scalia who has several kids (he’s Catholic) and he talked about how one of the boys in a family with many boys is supposed to be become a priest. I wonder if this ‘honor’ naturally is bestowed on the statistical gay one (who doesn’t show much interest in women anyway) and as Scalia says ‘takes one for the team.’ (Which then, in turn, perhaps explains Catholic priests and their reputations…)
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P.S. Don’t buy it? My second best theory on gays and evolution here: http://bert5.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/gays-evolution-teamwork-sacrifice/
