the awesome/terrifying freedom

so last week i promised to give my theory on homosexuality. hope this sparks some debate.

here's part 1 of my crack at it: "disputing the population control theory."

what is the evolutionary purpose of having roughly ten percent of the population turn out gay? a popular argument that i hear a lot of gay people spout is that 'we are here for population control,' that gay people exist to limit the growth of humanity and keep us from taking over the world and exhausting its resources. sort of a nice thought, but i think this is bullshit. for gay people to be an evolutionary solution to over-population would require evolution to have foresight. evolution doesn't work this way. it doesn't say 'hmm.. if we keep growing, resources will be a problem. i'd better make sure we don't grow too much. nature creates natural variances in the gene pool, then through natural selection, portions of the population die, and the surviving variances are passed forward through the generations, gradually creating new species, specifically adapted for their environments.

perhaps (although it's a really weak argument, seeing how humanity has exploded) population control is a result of homosexuality, but it does not account for its evolutionary purpose. why did the homosexuality gene survive? what were the natural conditions leading to it's existence? genetic traits survive because something about that trait enabled the person bearing it to survive beyond natural selection. they do not survive because one day, far far into the future people will over-run the planet and maybe we'll need to pull back a bit on our growth. evolution has no way of knowing something like that. it is geared toward only one thing: spread and multiply. a built in population control would be the worst kind of evolutionary foresight: a self-defeating prophecy. it would be disastrous to migratory, early human civilizations if humans had to overcome their own genetic makeup in order to ensure the species would survive; it wouldn't survive, it wouldn't grow. there are serious logical gaps in the argument.

the need to control our population is a new problem, not something that evolution would have dealt with. in about fifty years, when the earth is predicted to reach max capacity, then we'll see some population control-based natural selection going on. a better answer for population control is our tendency to wage war on each other, which is probably what will happen when we reach max capacity: it's a far more effective control than a 10% male buggering segment.

of course all of this assumes that homosexuality is a genetic predisposition. if you can't accept that conceit, then the rest isn't going to fly very well.

homosexuality has survived because it provides some evolutionary benefit to humanity. what is that benefit? the ability to match a throw pillow to an accented lampshade? well, of course! endless wit and wisdom? definitely! mentoring women on how to maintain their perms? most assuredly.

but why did we survive? a better question is why are we continuing to be born? why is roughly every other child male? why is roughly every tenth (another study says 1/100) child gay?

i want to hear your ideas.. i'll print mine later.