Gay-volution

Chris Rock has said in a few skits, "Everyone in this room has at least one gay cousin. You're all thinking about them now aren't you?"

If you do have a gay bro or sis, it turns out that you you are likely to score more with the opposite sex than those without. Or as The Economist, succinctly stated, "Genes that make some people gay make their brothers and sisters fecund". And perhaps my fave excerpt from the article:

Personality tests also show differences [between heteros and homos], with gay men ranking higher than straight men in standardised tests for agreeableness, expressiveness, conscientiousness, openness to experience and neuroticism. Lesbians tend to be more assertive and less neurotic than straight women.

It does not seem debated that in order for the genetics that tend to "make" people gay to survive "the ruthless imperatives of natural selection", the genes (and/or the gay family member) must provide a great advantage to compensate their heterosexual kin. (Links between gayness and genetics are well established: "Studies of identical twins, for example, show that if one of a pair (regardless of sex) is homosexual, the other has a 50% chance of being so too.")

In trying to answer how such a counter intuitive trait (from a Darwinian perspective) could survive, a Brisbane team of scientists believe that the "genes which cause men to be more feminine in appearance, outlook and behaviour and those that make women more masculine in those attributes, confer reproductive advantages as long as they do not push the individual possessing them all the way to homosexuality." The study found the "that heterosexuals with a homosexual twin tend to have more sexual partners than heterosexuals with a heterosexual twin."

I think this leaves fundis in a tight spot. How can such an "unnatural" characteristic convey an advantage for its followers "to be fruitful and multiply [and] populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it." (Gen. 9:7 New American Standard Bible)

Artist of the week: Cee-Lo