Homosexuality in giraffes and other non-human animals
queerty.com
queerty.com
That's not to say I believe human behaviour should somehow be judged by finding equivalents in the animal kingdom (what a silly concept!), it's just fun to point out to someone that even their ridiculous point is technically incorrect.
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20140723175514/http://www.blaghag...
What's ridiculous is looking to the animal kingdom to judicate what's normal for human homosexuality in either direction. Lots of mammals eat their young, I wouldn't use this as evidence to normalize infant cannibalism.
After gathering additional evidence that other animals "natuarlly" have same sex relations, that should shift the needle for me some amount in one direction, seeing as how I do not believe humans to be "more" but just differently evolved, and having evolved on the same planet in a complex web of species divergence with these other animals.
I liken it to saying that someone shouldn't be judged by having a face tattoo, because it is a personal choice that affects no one negatively. In practice however people with face tattoos are judged pretty harshly, and in a way that people with alopecia or facial birth marks are not, specifically because choices carry moral weight.
Another issue is that the choice argument comes with a lot of baggage for people who take it to mean that I am somehow intentionally upending what would otherwise be a lovely, traditional family with 2.3 kids and a dog because I chose to fraternize with men instead, but that since it is a choice it is also one I could undo at any time (see gay conversion therapy).
But it's also clear that there is not genetic influence in the ordinary sense that most people will imagine if you say a trait is genetic. Compare the question "is this person gay?" to "does this person speak French?" --
Can we predict whether a person speaks French just by looking at their DNA? Yes.
How good will the prediction be? Decent. French is mostly spoken by people in countries where French is the language of daily life. There is noise from a few sources: some people are naturally attracted to learning languages; some countries are more recent than others and the genetics of their residents are less informative; some countries have an imperfect layer of French on top of some other language(s). (You can easily identify a Frenchman by looking at his genes. It's harder to identify a French-speaking Canadian in Quebec that way. And it's much harder to identify a Vietnamese collaborator family that way.)
There is a genetic influence (in the intuitive sense) on whether you speak French. I mentioned it above -- some people are inclined towards learning languages. Within any given non-Francophone population, those people are more likely to speak French than everyone else is. But the very weak genetic signal amounts to nearly nothing because it is overwhelmed by very powerful environmental influence. If your parents speak only French, and everyone you ever meet speaks French, you will speak French too. And if none of the above is true, you're unlikely to speak French even if you might like to do so in the abstract.
So the fact that you can predict French-speaking from a person's genetics is mostly spurious -- it comes from the fact that genetics and French-speaking coincide without much direct influence of one on the other. The concordance of French-speaking in identical twins is much higher than 30% -- it is nearly 100%, despite the fact that the trait is not much influenced by genetics, because identical twins almost always grow up in the same country. And this is for an entirely non-genetic trait! Where a trait is genetically determined, you would see similar concordance levels -- since identical twins have the same genetics, their concordance on genetically-determined traits must be close to 100%. Studies of identical twins raised apart always find that a twin pair coincides on a creepily large number of apparently inconsequential behaviors, like habitually wearing seven rings. They should coincide more on very consequential behaviors such as refusal to breed.
30% concordance is so low as to preclude the idea that genetics is causing the one twin to be homosexual. It suggests instead that genetics is giving both twins a weakness, but a minor enough weakness that even when one twin succumbs the other twin usually stays healthy. There are two models that could match this:
- Homosexuality might strike at random, like radioactive decay. Genetics set the odds of it happening to you, and every day God rolls the dice to see whether you suddenly become gay.
- Homosexuality might be transmissible ("something you can catch"). Genetics set the odds of your successfully resisting infection.
The first option could reasonably be described as "innate". It cannot, however, be described as "born that way", which as I understand it is the argument that people are making when they say that homosexuality is innate. 30% concordance in identical twins conclusively demonstrates that homosexuals are not born that way. An adult's homosexuality is not specified by their genes -- it is a failure state to which their genes left them more or less vulnerable, and which needs some kind of trigger (possibly chance).
Summing up:
We were given three options: that homosexuality is "a choice", "innate", or "something you can catch".
As you note, "innate" is not particularly well defined. Neither is "a choice". But we can still reject the "choice" option pretty easily. From a common sense perspective, it is clear that people don't choose their wants. And the MZ twin concordance rate is too low -- where identical twins get to make choices, they generally make the same choices.
While "innate" can mean several things, it is very often used to mean an "intentional" effect of the genes, a body that faithfully executes its genetic plan (regardless of whether that plan is good or bad). (This isn't well-defined either, sadly.) The MZ twin concordance rate is much too low to support this for homosexuality. It is also used to mean an effect which will manifest regardless of circumstance. This is easy to reject, as there are no such phenomena. But with a more liberal interpretation of "regardless of circumstance", we can rule this out too.
I don't think anything discussed here is evidence for or against the idea that homosexuality is "something you can catch".
I will also note that this trichotomy fails to include some obvious types of causes. If, say, a rock falls on your arm and you lose the arm, I think that's better characterized as an "environmental shock" than as a disease, a genetic effect, an "innate" effect, or a choice, even though there is genetic and "choice" influence on the event. I tend to agree that 30% MZ twin concordance is too high for the environmental shock model to make sense in the US context.
But as I said above, the evidence in favor of "innate" as an explanation is not very good.
If in ten years, this research into animal sexuality was show to be falsified, misinterpreted, or just not representative of a wide range of nature, would you then decide human homosexuality is morally wrong?
That's the real risk of taking something which should be more of a moral axiom and claiming it derives from science and nature; you risk having it overturned in the future.
It doesn't mean that you can't make statements that are always true (today, tomorrow, in a hundred years, etc).
Once something is discovered and we understand the limits of the model, it is true forever e.g., Newton's laws under appropriate assumptions (not too fast, not much mass).
That's not a flack. It's inherent to the nature of the social sciences. Since every individual is part of a complex social system, it's incredibly hard to make repeatable experiments to test assumptions in the same way that physicists do every day for breakfast.
Both astrology and astronomy can study the same stars -- the difference is in methods they use (and only one is science).
So using that same argument, murder is “natural”, too.
By including homosexuality into a species, you have members who are able to gather and process energy without contributing to population growth. Population growth is a good thing, but too much is detrimental to the species (at least if you don't have access to agriculture). In addition, if the species is a social species, you can have richer communities without the burden of additional offspring, including non-binary genders (as primitive gender roles need not apply to homosexual members). This is especially true for humans, as our offspring is unusually vulnerable for an unusually extended time. Include adoption into the equation, and your species would have a bank of potential parents for abandoned (due to death or otherwise) offspring: in humans, bearing offspring is risky and consumes a lot of energy. Evolutionary speaking, it's not a good thing if all the energy expended in that newborn is left to waste.
The possibility of homosexuality is mathematically optimal and it is therefore a deeply natural phenomenon. You don't even need to look at the animal kingdom, it's right there in nature (assuming I'm correct, but I think my argument is compelling).
I've absolutely heard "homosexuality is immoral", but the two things are not really related.
Maybe people don't like to be watched, but I think there is a string driver to also reproduce and for men to put one's semen, ideally replacing the other man's.
Where have you been the last 50+ years? Porn has been and continues to be under constant attack by society. In the United States, even the First Amendment hasn't been as solid a defense as its wording would make it seem for pornographic works, and some states still have laws on the books banning "obscene devices" (though admittedly sex toys aren't speech)
People don't like others having sex, don't like knowing about it (unless they themselves are horny and want to see it, but heaven forbid anyone else be allowed the same privilege, which is the main reason you see so many anti-gay male politicians being caught in compromising positions with other men), and want to control everything about it.
There are two evolutionary reasons for this.
The first is pregnancy; and the difference between societies that have evolved without access to effective natural birth control and ones that have is as stark as you'd expect it to be.
The second is scarcity, which is related to the first thing (i.e. people weigh sex against major negative consequences if having sex can have major consequences), but can be slightly abated by a massive distribution network of pictures and videos of sex (while not the same thing, unlike physical hunger sexual appetite can be satisfied by the equivalent of simply looking at a picture of a tasty meal for a few minutes).
Modern society has only had 50 years with technology that does those two things reliably. Society at large just hasn't had enough time with these factors in play to loosen up, but the cracks are beginning to show.
Humans have developed elaborate bullshit to achieve basically that. Monogamy, possession, shame.
"Acting selfishly" is also a common victim-blame.
Not sharing your lunch money with povert bullies, or loving someone you love instead of whomever other people want you to love.
I’m ashamed.
Throughout our history, it's also mostly practiced out of necessity/pressure by the underclasses/commoners* of human society, not the rulers/leaders/wealthy.
* (not counting prostitution)
Entire societies and cultures have been built around the idea that sex is unnatural and requires special rituals and public approval to be had, and even then you're not supposed to actually enjoy it.
Perhaps this distinction does not seem like it matters but I predict in the future this distinction will be extremely common (in humans at least).
What purpose does this distinction serve?
Consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_who_have_sex_with_men
I'm personally in the camp that if you have sex with genders outside the opposite of your own, then you're either gay or bisexual. I don't differentiate between whether you're attracted to the same sex or just seriously, uncontrollably horny and desperate to shag anything with an orifice.
I guess I still don't see the relevance of a distinction beyond that of psycho-semantics.
Who am I to say why an animal who's mind I have no insight into is having sex? I wouldn't even dare to begin supposing pretending I have any idea of what's going on in an octopus' mind(s).
(Although I did once read a fascinating fiction on some blog about exactly that. Can't find it now)
Sexually attractive? Well yes, if you're humping it you find it sexually attractive.
Psychologically attractive? Only if you have some kind of complex against being labeled 'homosexual' or 'bisexual' while still engaging in coutius with other people of the same sex.
Emotionally/Intellectually attractive? Well, personally I don't find myself sexually attracted to people (and in effect, things) whom I can't satisfactorily engage with on an intellectual and emotional level. I know some people are different and will fuck anything that moves. I've had people tell me so themselves. But I don't think the "Men Who Have Sex With Men" label discusses intellectual stimulation as a stipulation.
It’s very common in sexual health because “men who have sex with other men” is much more useful when reasoning about disease spread than peoples wide gamut of self-reported sexual orientations.
There are definitely gay people who get married and have kids though. An alien who doesn't understand humans might classify them as heterosexual.
I’m sure animals do it based on behavior as well. If a peer is acting sick (even if not), I’m sure their behavior changes.
Sorry about the blogspam link. I have seen more reputable articles about chimpanzees with alopecia, but my search skills are failing me now. The gist always seems to be that hairless chimpanzees (there have been several in zoos) aren't treated differently by others.
Although animals have been observed to have same-sex coupling, they mix it up with males and females. In the animal kingdom the only species that have been observed to have exclusively homosexual sex are humans and domesticated sheep. One would think that a sexual organism never having heterosexual sex would be a huge evolutionary fitness disadvantage, and such a trait would be extremely uncommon. There are some caveats, for example: Sharks are able to reproduce asexually, and frogs can “switch” genders AFTER reproduction, during adverse conditions. But lifelong homosexuality has not been observed in species other than humans and domesticated sheep, which suggests that relaxed evolutionary pressures may be a necessary component.
From Wikipedia
Simon LeVay introduced caveat that "[a]lthough homosexual behavior is very common in the animal world, it seems to be very uncommon that individual animals have a long-lasting predisposition to engage in such behavior to the exclusion of heterosexual activities. Thus, a homosexual orientation, if one can speak of such thing in animals, seems to be a rarity."[8] One species in which exclusive homosexual orientation occurs, however, is that of domesticated sheep (Ovis aries).[9][10] "About 10% of rams (males), refuse to mate with ewes (females) but do readily mate with other rams."[10]
Genes do not "care" for individual organisms. If they did we would be immortal. Jared Diamond argued that the presence of homosexual uncles/aunts is the same kind of an advantage as the presence of no-longer-breeding grandparents.
> such a trait would be extremely uncommon.
Homosexuality is pretty rare, isn't it?
The theories about alpha and beta wolves turned out to be wrong btw. The wolves that were observed in captivity were simply closely related families.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/no-such-thing-alpha-male-201...
Also, if homosexuality is a strategy for childcare, why do homosexual relatives contribute so little to their nieces and nephews? And if it is a successful strategy, why does it occur at such a low prevalence?
It relies on the naturalistic fallacy which I don't like, but it also shuts down people who make the argument that homosexuality is unnatural and therefore bad, which I do like.
Ultimately, homosexuality in humans is fine not because it's natural, but because we should, by default, let consenting adults do what they want together.
The argument is more like "eating dirt is okay for earthworms, but it's unnatural for humans", so appeal to the behavior of other animals completely misses the point.
This is a profoundly metaphysical debate about the nature of a life well-lived and the nature of a healthy society. Whatever one thinks of it, that's the level on which it ought to be discussed.
"Natural" is used to mean "in the ontology of Man".
This is so important and so regularly gets ignored by people on all sides. Once, a long time ago, I was talking to a much-smarter-than-me gay friend about the gay marriage debate in the US, and I said that being gay wasn't a choice and that _therefore_ yada yada. He said the only thing that in hindsight ever really matters, though at the time I'd never heard anyone say it before. He said "So what if it were a choice? What exactly does that change? You can't choose who to spend your life with? You can't choose who to share resources with? You can't choose who gets to be your proxy? Why is choice not important?"
I understand what you mean, but it doesn't seem to be the case. In regards to sexual preferences, for example, there are some that are, arguably, not a choice either, and still are considered absolutely forbidden.
> For example you and I are against Down's syndrome, but we can't make any progress by telling people to stop having it.
Nope, that would be ridiculous. But at the same time having Down's syndrome is not devoid of legal consequences. You'll probably be denied a driving license or the possibility to own guns, and you can argue as much as you want that your condition is perfectly natural and you didn't have a choice, it won't make any difference.
There doesn't seem to be much evidence that sexuality can be changed by conscious choice. So if your sexuality runs along those lines you're going to have a bad time, because you'll either have to repress your urges, or risk actions that damage others, possibly with criminal consequences.
The edge cases of this can become ridiculous - but still tragic. E.g. there are people who are primarily turned on by paving stones and/or drain covers.
It's not really obvious what "natural" means in this context. Is this imprinting? Genetics? Something else? There aren't any good answers. Criminal law does the best it can with them, but it's not clear that choice really applies, and criminal punishment is pointless and ineffective anyway - either as a deterrent or as rehabilitation.
The bigger moral question is maybe why some social groups seem obsessed with what they consider sexual deviance - including their beliefs about homosexuality - while apparently ignoring other moral and social questions.
What is the psychological process that turns homosexuality into a uniquely disturbing moral problem for them, while other hot-button issues - poverty, diet, government and corporate corruption, take your pick from a long list - are relatively uninteresting for them?
The motivation is mostly religious.
Homosexuality must be a choice, otherwise God created homosexuals as they are, and homosexuality is just another part of Nature.
But if that's true, homosexuality can't be a sin, because sin is always a choice.
But homosexuality is a sin because the Bible says it is (even though it doesn't really,) therefore it must be a choice.
Also, why do you feel the Christian sacred texts doesn't really condemn homosexuality? I feel you have to do a lot of extra-textual analysis and theory-crafting to reach that perspective, so it's no surprise that Christians in general don't buy that idea.
And... it also condemns masturbation, marrying foreigners, eating fish, letting menstruating women inside the city limits and mixing fabrics.
Someone living in Biblical times probably wouldn't have any concept of someone being "straight" or "gay," just of someone following cultural norms or violating cultural taboos. So to say the Bible condemns homosexuality is a misappropriation of the intent of the text outside of the cultural and temporal context to which it was intended to apply.
There is a very convenient Christian doctrine where there are "three types of law in the Bible", which explains that some rules are meant for Israelites and some are meant for everyone (and you [or the church] basically get to guess which apply to you).
This comment you're reading has a dead sibling that pointed out the commonly-held Christian doctrine that some of the Bible's laws don't apply to modern Christians.
The commenter is absolutely correct, and here is a link from a famous and well-regarded theologian on the subject (R.C Sproul).
https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/which-laws-apply/
In summary, there are civil, ceremonial, and moral laws in the Old Testament. For example, "no murder" is a moral law, while dietary restrictions are a ceremonial law.
I'm not commenting on the validity or "correctness" of this doctrine, as I am not a theologian. I just think it's worth confirming that this is something a lot of Christians believe.
In general, NT has plenty of stuff that can be appropriated for fire-and-brimstone preaching. Most of it is Paul's, which is why some consider Pauline Christianity to be a mutilation of what was preached before.
[0] never met Christ, so he had to pretend he had some sort of vision to get in the club... Jesus treated the money changers better than He would have treated Paul.
It always read to me that it was more about turning men into women than it was about actually performing homosexual acts.
Not if you believe in total depravity combined with unconditional election. Which just happens to be the cornerstone dogmas of one very popular Christian denomination.
When you say "homosexuality" do you mean homosexual proclivities, or homosexual acts? It's an important nuance.
Judiasm/Christianity/Islam teaches that humans have a proclivity to sin (fallen nature), but God commands them to not sin, i.e. to act ccontrary to their nature.
There is no theological contradiction (or least, not anymore than normal) between natural homosexuals and God forbidding homosexual acts.
EDIT: The actual consequence of natural homosexuality is a difference of understanding. Birth condition vs self-inflicted. "Crack baby" vs "crack head".
P: Sex outside of marriage is a sin.
Q: Marriage is between a man and a woman.
Therefore [P and Q] implies that homosexual activity is wrong but the mere act of being attracted to the same sex is not inherently sinful.
As for why that should influence our votes for public policy, the reasoning goes that sin always brings trouble, death, and non-well-being to society, therefore influencing public policy away from sinful societal patterns and acts is one important way to love one’s neighbors, since it will result in greater well-being for them.
He argues for gay marriage and the right to an abortion substantially on the basis of limited government. The existing regulations are often substantially motivated by religion, which is contrary to the establishment clause ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...") -- and outside of these motivations the government has not proffered any credible reasons for regulation.
In short, there is no reason for the gay community to prove anything; the government has no reason for its regulations, or at best reasons proffered in bad faith.
With regards to Professor Bedi's over-arching philosophy, of focusing on reasons, I do have some reservations. In particular, I wonder how he proposes to limit government with only this focus. Just the same, in this case he argues clearly and well, that putting the onus on gay people to prove they deserve the right to marry is a strange place to start from, if we are starting from within a framework of limited government.
Well, showing that something exists in nature is much more factual and objective than debates will ever be over what people should and shouldn't do
The "naturalistic fallacy" is therefore a fallacy because it proofs too much: "nature" doesn't want us to go to the moon; it doesn't want us to vaccinate; it sees absolutely no point in rewriting a browser in Rust.
Wild humans were probably social. For comparison, Chimpanzee and Bonobos are social, they live in small groups. The next human relative is Gorilla, that are social too. Orangutans too. I don't know how far we must go to find a solitary relative of humans.
(Note that all of them have very different sexual behavior.)
> [nature] doesn't want us to vaccinate
I don't know a natural example in other animal, but I'd not be surprised if there are any. There were some trick to get a natural vaccination before there were good vaccines. Just wait until there is a year with a mild version, and try to get your kids infected, so the year with a strong version they will be already immunized. (Like a "chickenpox party" that is a very stupid idea now that there are good vaccines.) For example see the early methods to get smallpox immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation
"Should" is inherently subjective. There is not, in either principle it practice, any evidence that can answer a "should" question without reference to an established "should" presupposition. Get used to it.
Why? This strikes me as a very shallow moral principle. As 'presscast notes it completely misses the point of the nature of a life well-lived.
Ironically, in practice it goes against human nature. Atomized society of people passing each other indifferently is certainly freer in some sense but it's also lonely and depressing for many of its members. It goes directly against our most basic needs for social belonging.
>Why? This strikes me as a very shallow moral principle.
that is a circular argument as morals are the behaviors that society allows consenting adults to engage in.
Wrt. [un]naturality based arguments - there is nothing natural about humans using smartphones, flying in airplanes, etc. yet billions of people shamelessly engage in those unnatural activities everyday. We're way past natural... Why are we so hellbent about whether it is natural or unnatural of how some people enjoy each other company?
So true -- but here we are talking about it as a legal principle. It's about what the government can't do, not about what people should do.
But then again I have seen the terrible devastation that was brought upon some less fortunate friends when they realised they were gay: teenagers driven into isolation (and, once, suicide) by their former "friends"; beloved members of their respective communities and/or families having to start from scratch, just because those communities happened to be "conservative".
I'm having a hard time believing anybody would choose such suffering with anything approaching a sensible definition of the term "free choice".
It's also important to remember that "born that way" is mostly just the headline of a more complex story of how sexuality is understood, one that even progressive activists wouldn't oppose. This sees homo/hetero-sexuality not as a binary choice, but as a spectrum. There's a set point you're born with. Then there's an overlay of culture–just think how much more acceptable it is for women to kiss than it is for men. Finally, there is some wiggle room any individual may experience over the span of their lives, or even just the span of a day given the right intoxicating substances.
This doesn't contradict the idea of inborn sexual orientation, because (see above) cultural and experiential factors are almost definitely not able to overcome biology for many. But it may help to overcome any cognitive dissonance you feel.
Right in another thread is an article about a pacemaker. Almost nothing in a car, let alone in any electronic device, is untouched by human invention and chemical/physical transformation. Tradition — what "natural" ultimately amounts to — is prologue, not fate.
I always thought that the argument was just for the sake of proving that this natural/unnatural thing is worthless. Homosexuality is natural and nonetheless someone opposes it on the grounds that it's not. Illnesses are natural but nobody is opposed to curing people.
Anyway, it's the old observation that conservatives tend to confuse the is with the ought to be- in other words, to argue that because something is natural or common then it is morally justified and should be enforced.
I've noticed what could be an exactly opposite tendency in liberals though, and I think it's interesting: confusing the ought to be with the is. It's not used as an argument, but it seems to inform some reasoning. For example:
(these are just some examples and I'm thinking out loud, so please don't crucify me)
- there shouldn't be any racial or sexual discriminations -> there are no differences whatsoever between ethnic groups and genders;
- gay couples should be allowed to raise children -> there is absolutely no difference between a heterosexual family and a homosexual family;
- there shouldn't be rich and poors -> money can be removed from society and everybody will be equal;
Etc.
Take racial differences. If any politically problematic difference between races were to be found, then a liberal will be very inclined to suppress this. Why? Because if the conservatives ever got ahold of it, they'd go "aha! racism is justified!" and there wouldn't ever be an end to it - arguing that racism is immoral is a lot harder, pragmatically, than arguing that it's simply mistaken.
I wonder if there's feedback the other way, as well. I can't immediately see the mechanism but I suspect there is one. Perhaps seeing liberalism associated with a deranged sense of reality causes people to reject it wholesale...
Being born with it, rather than a choice -- meant that unfair treatment of homosexuals was morally equivalent to race/ethnic origin based prosecutions.
Therefore, civil rights accomplishments, and modern legal framework resulting from those -- would apply to homosexuals.
If 'being born with' would not have been recognized as scientific truth, then homosexual marriages would likely be treated the same as consenting adult polygamists.
I think this is one of reasons why non-binary people having hard time being recognized in same policy/morality structures as homosexual people.
> Ultimately, homosexuality in humans is fine not because it's natural, but because we should, by default, let consenting adults do what they want together.
Why? Indeed "unnatural=bad" is pointless, there are just so many "unnatural" things people do that are considered ok (btw the mere fact they do already suggests it's not unnatural, umans are a part of nature to and they are doing something without being forced). Even simple medication or agriculture or exercising can be considered "unnatural". Besides that why can homosexuality be considered bad? I'm straight but take it as a matter of taste, males just don't feel attractive to me. I can see no reason I could take seriously. If a significant percent of homosexual acts between healthy partners would result in serious diseases or trauma I would consider this as a clue but I haven't ever read about any evidence suggesting this.
When does "by default" become "actually, no, that's bad and even consenting adults shouldn't do that"? If you want to take a strong position that there should be no such thing as a victimless crime, then that's coherent and valid - but if you want to hedge with "by default", I think you have to provide a stronger framework why this thing is okay and that thing isn't. You still have to say something pragmatic like "homosexuality has no documented negative social effects".
(Although personally, I do think that the very idea of a victimless crime is suspect - while some behaviors between consenting adults do have unambiguously negative consequences, criminalizing actions for their invisible second-order effects seems to often cause other, nastier second-order effects. But it's certainly up for debate - applying this rigorously would mean e.g. legalizing all drugs, which is a difficult sell.)
I don't think this is abstract ethical argument, but practical argument about policy. So we don't have to provide any stronger framework. Whoever wishes to argue that something is not OK has to provide detailed arguments backed by evidence about harm that is being produced and demonstrate that someone non-consenting is actually suffering from that harm (even if the effects are second-order). And the burden of proof needs to be significant.
Starting from "allowed by default" would already be a big improvement.
> applying this rigorously would mean e.g. legalizing all drugs, which is a difficult sell
Homosexuality was also a difficult sell. That doesn't mean anything.
Yes, this is what limited government is about. It makes policy makers accountable to the people, not the other way around.
Because the government can not really implement a ban per se, but rather a particular policy that hopefully eliminates the harm, policy makers actually have to make a case for something and not just against something. Otherwise, it's just the government proclaiming that the world would be better off without something. In which case, let us start with war, margarine and bad coffee.
Like the guy who agreed to be murdered and eaten in Germany?
"Between consenting adults" is a necessary but unsufficient condition.
For example, consider how would we know if someone consented to being killed? And how could a consent structure for it be abused? This is where we see it bump against another important principle, that we may not deprive another person of their life without due process of law.
The only people I know personally who aren't using them end up immediately installing one or asking to have one installed as soon as they find out it's an option. This group typically consists of grandparents and other people who know little to nothing about the internet.
What’s interesting with the giraffes is the really high prevalence (94%), which suggests it’s an adaptation to some form of natural selection. Even the rate of 10% would suggest an adaptive response, but the really high rate emphasizes this.
(or they just like it, it does not have to be an evolutionary trick)
But it's not the only one. Another is that species that employ K strategy (low reproduction rates, high investment into offspring to ensure its survival) and that are social, gradually develop some kind of social safety net mechanisms for offspring, in cases where e.g. the parent dies or is sick and unable to provide proper care. One way to do that is to have some proportion of the population that does not breed on their own, thus ensuring that they are always available to rear others' offspring. Since evolution generally takes the path of least resistance, it's easier to achieve this by redirecting sexual drive than by switching it off entirely. And this can even make sense from a "selfish gene" perspective of one individual, because if you help enough of your close relatives (who share many genes with you) keep their kids alive, it may actually be more effective than betting on a few children of your own surviving to carry more shared genes.
(If this theory is right, that has interesting implications for all those laws restricting adoption by same-sex parents...)
But also, don't forget that evolution does not "care" about organisms, only about genes; and a gene can be carried across generations without manifesting itself. Suppose it is beneficial to carry the "gay gene", because it means that more of your descendants don't die, even if some of them won't procreate - producing a net gain in the propagation of your genes on the whole, ironically. That would trigger selection, once such a gene appears.
That doesn't work because even though less of your gay descendants will starve, the straight organisms in the population will also reap the benefits and they'll still be at an evolutionary advantage.
And in your original example, the straight organisms still die in the end. So over the lifetime of multiple colonies, the ones that survive would carry more "cooperative" genes, no? I mean, isn't this basically how biological altruism develops in general?
It doesn't matter. It's a gene that, in the long term, slightly increases the chance of every other individual reproducing while immediately greatly decreasing its own chance. That just doesn't work.
>over the lifetime of multiple colonies, the ones that survive would carry more "cooperative" genes
Evolution already works extremely slowly when its forces are applied to individual organisms. Any theory that requires evolution to act on entire populations is extremely unlikely. Also, you'd need a way for the gay gene to spread among a colony population in the first place in order for that colony to be selected in the way you postulate.
Another problem is that if ever a cooperative (in this particular sense of abstaining from reproduction) population meets an uncooperative one, eventually the uncooperative genes are going to take over again. It would need to speciate before that happens.
>I mean, isn't this basically how biological altruism develops in general?
I'm not really familiar with the concept, but it's easy to predict some things: Biological altruism will generally mean an organism helping another at a small or no cost and/or the benefited organism is a close relative that likely shares the gene. The gay gene fits neither criteria. The examples on Wikipedia do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_%28biology%29#Example...
Lastly, nature has other ways to solve overpopulation. Organisms can evolve to require less food, change their diets to something else, become aggressive towards other individuals of the same species (killing the competition), or best of all: combining those last two things by resorting to cannibalism (this was the actual result of an experiment that applied evolutionary pressure over populations of insects).
Don't forget that all those other individuals in vicinity carry some of the same genes - the closer, the more genetically related they are, in general. You'd need to compute how much that small but broad effect can add up to the total percentage of genes propagated indirectly.
I get that it doesn't sound very "common sense", but I don't think it can be rejected outright without doing the numbers and modeling first. Which is exactly what people in the field do, and if they say that it's plausible (i.e. that they can come up with models that are consistent with observations, and that demonstrate stable propagation), then it can't be dismissed out of hand. Look up "group selection" for the kind of models that they use.
Also, that Wikipedia article gives some far more extreme examples of biological altruism, like self-sacrificing ants - noting that this is still evolutionary viable because of how much shared genetic material is there in the rest of the colony (indeed, one could say that the very social structure of ant colonies with non-reproducing workers is an extreme example of biological altruism taken to 11 by evolution). And then we have our own social mores, which have included literal self-sacrifice for the sake of one's "tribe" as a virtue for pretty much as long as we can trace human culture back - and it's not on its way out, either. Clearly, we aren't ants, but in this case, is it really a qualitative difference, or simply the result of the same process applied to different starting conditions and different evolutionary pressures, producing different points on the same scale?
Side note: when I was digging into modern evolutionary theory, one surprising (to me) thing that came up is that there have been substantial revisions in the estimated speed of evolution as a process since Darwin's days. Sexual selection in particular is a mechanism that turned out to work much faster than originally anticipated, and can in fact push other traits that wouldn't be viable otherwise over the viability threshold. One theory is that it developed in the first place because faster selection - i.e. adaptability - is itself a selected-for trait, so it's kinda getting very meta. And there's a fringe but intriguing argument that our human culture (and its building blocks, like language) is, essentially, a further development along these lines to reduce the lag even further - memes can change faster than genes, so population groups that rely less on genetically hardcoded behavior and more on transmitted social mores, are more adaptable. But of course the genes are still there, so those transmitted behaviors that can be implemented on top of hardwired stuff are going to be stronger, even if the original effect was very subtle - e.g. modern concepts of fairness and justice (presumably evolved from hardwired behaviors like parochial altruism).
>Biological altruism will generally mean an organism helping another at a small or no cost and/or the benefited organism is a close relative that likely shares the gene.
Ants and bees are extreme examples of the later.
In your theory, the only beneficiaries of fewer individuals reproducing are the straight (and bi) individuals who are still reproducing. It's a really bad theory to explain homosexuality and I don't know why anyone would insist on it when it's so easy to come up with better ones. Just think of something that would benefit the individuals carrying the genes themselves. Maybe an attraction to muscles (or some other manly characteristic in that species) that leads to stronger offspring when the individual mates with muscular females, but can go too far sometimes leading to homosexuality.
>one surprising (to me) thing that came up is that there have been substantial revisions in the estimated speed of evolution as a process since Darwin's days. Sexual selection in particular is a mechanism that turned out to work much faster than originally anticipated, and can in fact push other traits that wouldn't be viable otherwise over the viability threshold. One theory is that it developed in the first place because faster selection - i.e. adaptability - is itself a selected-for trait, so it's kinda getting very meta.
That's actually really interesting! Got any good links on that? The speed of evolution is something that sometimes bothers me when looking at highly complex adaptations.
http://www.unm.edu/~gfmiller/new_papers2/todd%201997%20biodi...
"This paper presents theoretical arguments and simulation results in support of our view that sexual selection creates new fi tness peaks (and thus new niches), helps species escape from old local optima to find new, better peaks, and promotes speciation to increase the number of lineages searching for peaks."
I don't have anything to back this up scientifically, but ISTM this phenomenon doesn't have to be adaptive in and of itself, since it could be a side effect of something else that is adaptive. (Human example: getting sick from sickle cell is not adaptive, but resistance to malaria is.) TFA describes female giraffes as only occasionally fertile, and somewhat aloof even then. Perhaps it takes a real horn-dog to persist given all the rejection. Well that's nice once every two years, but what is a horn-dog to do the rest of the time? What do human horn-dogs do when placed in environments without women, like prison?
It's interesting that the inherent ungainliness of giraffes allows females to reject coitus as they choose.
Of course this is just an idea, which, even if it describes some of the male giraffes, may not describe all of them. I don't mean to suggest that homosexual giraffe sex is in any respect less important than heterosexual giraffe sex.