I am getting really tired of having to say that the nature/nature controversy is biollogical nonsense. Once again, then. Genens give us propensities to behave in certain ways in certyain ranges of environments -- more or less wide ranges of propensities. There are no such things are genes that operating outside any environment, and no environment that does not interact with their genetic inheritance. Therefore -- thgis is biology 101 -- it is never nature OR nture. It always and necessarily both,
What I suppose Kelley means is that the range of sexual preferences that genetic gives us in any environment is as plastic and variable as the range of preferences for food our genetic nbature gives us. That is possible but clearly false. We know it is false because if it were true, the range of variability in human sexual preference would be as great as that of fooid. But this is not so. Instead, the evidence we have is
1. that the proportion of persons who exclusively prefer one sex or another is remarkable stable in different times and places,
2. that the variability, e.g., the presence or absense of widely accepted opportunistic homosexuality, can be accounted for by explanations of the sort that I discussed yesterday
3. that sexual preference is virtually impossible to affect by training (gays can't be "cured"; straights can't be "converted")
4. that twins studies show a much higher correlation between homosexuality in twins than in nontwin sibs, that sib studies show a higher correlation between homosexuality in sibs than in the general population,
Etc. There is just boatloads of evidence that sexual preference is not like food and it's not like language. The constriants are a lot tighter.
There is a good sociobiological reason for this. Although homosexuals can and do reproduce, their favored sexual practices mean they do so at a lower rate than heterosexuals. (I"m not buying into a bipolarlity here -- this holds the more homiosexual you are.) Therefore you would expect homosexuality to be selected against, in fact, that is the meaning of being selected against, insofar as it has any genetic component at al, and the evidence is that this component is considerable.
Therefore the persistence of homosexuality calls for explanation. Sociobiologically: (1) it might be adaptive, e.g., on the useful uncle trheory I mentioned; (2) it might be a spandrel, (3) it might be maladaptiove but linked to some adaptive trait. Of course it might be socially encouraged, as in the ancient world, but that only raises the question about why it persists when it is socially discouraged, as in the Christian world until recently (he said optimistically).
Kells, biology will not bite you. It is not a sin to admit that biology makes a contribution to our behavior. It is not tantamount to justifying the most repressive aspects of the current system as inevitable. It is an empirical question -- one that has to be framed properly -- not as nature v. nuture, but as what range of behaviors do our genes permit or encourage in what range of environments.
Sexual preference is not as impervious to environmental variation as some traits (eyer color), but it is closer to that end than to the food or language end.
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