At first glance, homosexuality seems genetically paradoxical: homosexuals are less likely to pass on their genes to the next generation, so you would think if the trait were in any way genetic, then the trait would become bred out of the population.
A model I've heard of recently is that there is not a gene/genes for homosexuality, but separate gene/genes for being attracted to women and being attracted to men, or something along those lines. When a man has the gene for being attracted to women, or when a woman is attracted to men, it results in heterosexuality. When it is the other way, it results in homosexuality.
Like many other traits, these traits could sex-linked resulting in the predominantly heterosexual nature of the population, but homosexuality would never become completely bred out, possibly due to effects such as genetic crossover. Ironically under a certain variation of this model, "strongly heterosexual" parents might be more likely to have homosexual children, no doubt leading to family unhappiness.
There are many knobs and free variables to this model, some of which might help explain things like bisexuality (someone possesses both of the genes), and some sex-linking or dominance/recessive interaction might explain why bisexuality seems to be more common in women than in men.
Another trait that might exist is "having physical features that people who are attracted to women would find attractive". (Or men). And this could be linked, for example, by position on a chromosome, to the "attracted to" gene.
These linked effects could yield very interesting nonlinear behavior in computer simulation of generations. Eigenvalues.
1 comment :
Some thought-provoking possibilities here from a scientific perspective. However, the psychosocial aspect is perhaps of greater concern: Why someone is gay, bisexual, or whatever isn't as important as how that person is treated by the rest of the population. It is a sad fact that a large segment of society still regards gay men and women (among various minorities) as second-class citizens - or worse. That is the salient point of my recently released biographical novel, Broken Saint. It is based on my forty-year friendship with a gay man, and chronicles his internal and external struggles as he battles for acceptance (of himself and by others). More information on the book is available at www.eloquentbooks.com/BrokenSaint.html.
Mark Zamen, author
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