Let me start by saying that in the margin I favor gay marriage. Social stigmas attached to things that you can do nothing about need to be reduced. I have written about it before on this blog. But now I have a new concern. People are born gay or not and in the past because of the social stigma most gays lived in the closet. They suppressed their true feelings, married and many had children.
Now here is my concern: If gay is a genetic propensity and in our new more open society gays don’t have to hide they also won’t have to have babies. So subsequent generations will have less people with a genetic propensity to be gay. Eventually the result of a society accepting gay lifestyles will be a significant reduction in the number of gays. Talk about unintended consequences.
I know some of you are doubting my theory. So try this mind experiment: If tall people were not allowed to have children over time would people on average be shorter? I invite your comments.
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Dad your theory is flawed, but not in the way you expect. Based on your theory being homossexual is a simple genetic equation. However clearly being homosexual is far more complex. As far as can be deduced being homosexual is a mixture of nature and nurture. That means that their would still be some of the genes out their no matter what.
In addition, many homosexuals use surrogates or donors not just adoption so unless you forbid them from having children, which will mean you are digging an even bigger hole, they will continue to have children.
This is Henry L’s reply to my theory: A genetic propensity would arise in one’s genes. However, it is possible that one’s genes have a newly, spontaneously arising mutation–think Down syndrome. Thus, genetic but not inherited.
It is also possible that the likelihood of this spontaneous mutation is much greater than any “inherited” means. Therefore the behavior of a gay person would be irrelevant to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (wiki that), which determines the percentage of stably inherited genes in a population.
Lillian I think that based on the above Henry agrees with you.
Simon– We’ve just returned from an Eastern EU Jewish Roots tour, which included a visit to the Warsaw Ghetto, 2 extermination camps and a re-visiting of early 20th century eugenics ideology and the intended consequences. Clearly letting observable genetics information guide legislation to achieve a resulting set of population traits was a bad idea….everyone lost. I don’t think we yet understand the control mechanisms that link today’s genetic code information with observable traits in complex, multi-genic or partially genetic-influenced cases. We barely understand the gene expression characteristics for single point mutations, eg CF Disease. It’s still a mystery….and I agree, stop blocking gay rights. Brock
Brock
As a libertarian lite I don’t favor most legislation I’m just wondering about a long-term unintended consequence. If gays can live openly, which is a good thing, and gay is to some tiny extent a hereditary trait over time won’t there be less gays?
not sure if I did the spam math correctly, so maybe this won’t show up….and that’s probably OK too. I suspect that the quantitative value of “tiny” is key. Right now my thinking is that it’s in the noise…a S/N issue, where other factors are overwhelming. You can also look at it on an “input/output” basis: what’s the source and strength of the current genetic signal creating gays vs how much would that be diminished by increased offspring from openly gay guys…..and is it determined by the male or female? About now an experimental result is needed to determine if the proposed “gay gene” is strongly expressed by males.