On Tue, 29 Nov 2005, Arash wrote:
> Do you really think this genetically influenced behavior just emerged out of
> the blue in recent human history (last 10,000 years)? How did it spread out
> to 2-6% of the population? For that matter shouldn't we be witnessing a
> rapid decline in the exclusive homosexuality group as there is such a
> negative effect on reproduction for this segment of the population? I don't
> see any reason to believe that is the case.
What has "emerged out of the blue" is the social demand for people to be exclusively homosexual or heterosexual in their sexual behavior. The stability of these sexual categories over the past few hundred years (not the last 10,000!) is a product of social relations. Understood in this way, there is no puzzle about why exclusive homosexuality exists, regardless of reproductive effects: it's not a product of natural selection! (Again, you're assuming every trait in a species must contribute to reproductive success, or it "declines" in frequency. This is a gross oversimplification of the theory of evolution.)
Miles