| > Homosexuality, indeed, is a discouragement to species survival Maybe not. Homosexuality has been very widely observed in nature. [0] My understanding is that modern biologists tend to take the view that evolution is, for whatever reason, not acting to eliminate it. There exist genetic disorders like cystic fibrosis which, it seems quite clear, have no evolutionary 'upside', but which nonetheless haven't been eliminated by natural selection. I believe most modern biologists tend not to put homosexuality in the same bucket, simply on account of how widespread it seems to be in nature. I have to say I don't understand Dawkins' idea that homosexuality might be a 'misfiring' of genes, contingent on modern human life, given that homosexual behaviour has been observed in other apes. [1] [0] Annoyingly Wikipedia has very little to say on this interesting question. [2] > Given the cultural and experiential components of sexual attraction, I really don't think genetics need to be worth that much. Maybe there's some contribution, but it doesn't seem to have much scope, nor does it need it. I don't see how that figures. One would surely expect evolution to 'care' a great deal about mate-selection. That's how we have Fisherian runaways, after all. [3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDmQns78FR8 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality#Evolutionary_per... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway |