Buddha1 said:
It's always a pleasure to discuss things with real scientists. You get to know a lot of relevant scientific facts (and terminologies) useful for your analysis especially, if you're a layman like me.
... I'm not a real scientist, I'm not a scientist...
Although, I hate to use the words homosexuality and heterosexuality (because for one both are loaded with socio-political baggages), I will not make that an issue here, because the basic purpose here is to talk about and understand the biology, and I don't want to divert attention.
I think that sometimes this sort of subject need some preliminary clarification of what-is-meant-by-what.
Conversations may be unfruitful without this clarification of terms, doesn't matter exactly if one agrees with the term, but some consensus must be achieved in order to one people say one thing and the other understand it correctly. Sometimes the comprehension of the other person's conclusions can't be achieved since each person has slightly different concepts for each term, so is more or less like two persons making the same equations but with different values for the same variables. The tags are the same, but are tagging different things.
"Sex" for example, I personally prefer to use the word for the distinction between genders, and that's how I "defaultly" understand it. But some people use the word "sex" more widely, can be any sort of genetic recombination, even bacterial, even technicality "asexual".
Well, eventually I'll try to describe what I think that's the origin of sex, and all related stuff, eventually adopting some terminology that wouldn't be your favourite, but I think that this discussion can be much more effective with an initial agreement on this stuff, wherever is the terminology, because what matters most is what's happening/what's that than how you tag it.
I could add to this that according to my observation male-female sex amongst the wild is not that universal or regularly practised by all the males every year Many males indulge in it at some time in their life. Many don't do it at all. Perhaps the same cannot be said about same-sex behaviour which seems to be more of the rule at least in some species (e.g. the mammals).
Therefore if the theory of natural selection is true, then it's only partly true.
I'll just disagree a bit with the end, to start.
Whatever is the reality of these behaviors, natural selection very very hardly is any affected.
What is affected is that for some reason, what at first sight seems to be the more adaptive trait, the trait that has the higher reproductive differential (in this case is supposed to be male-female sex preponderance) turns to not be the more adaptive, as thought.
Is this, or we're talking about some sort of entirely new mechanism of evolution that I just don't have any idea of what it would be.
I have to say that would be very counter intuitive, to not say a bit weird, if there's a preponderance of same-sex. I'd expect that, if the idea that different-sex as more adaptive was not the general rule, that at least the general rule would be to sexual behavior to be somewhat random in relation to the gender, and not that the sexual behavior would tend to the same gender.
I don't have a problem accepting that it could be the more adaptive in some cases (cases of species, not even individuals), but seems strange that would prevail among mammals in general, when variants tending to different-sex behaviour would probably reproduce more, and thus exist more. In order to explain that, same-sex behavior ought to have a strong selective advantage over the any-sex behavior our different-sex behavior.
The general advantage of same-sex behavior would be, I think, as a form of a 'K' reproductive strategy (I don't know to what the "K" stands for, but it means more resources per individual, as opposed to "r", which I also don't know where it came from, but means more offspring and less resources for each).
But the "extreme" K strategy would mean to not have any offspring at all, which is totally unadaptive, at least in the individual level. Genes that determine this behaviour could survive by reproducing themselves through siblings, anyway.
Also, strict, lifelong, same-sex (and different-sex too) behavior isn't a necessary assumption, could be that different sex-behavior can be trigged in apparently strict homosexual individuals as an reproductive mechanism.
That's how I think that an prevailing homosexual species or population could work to be viable, but I yet can't see how it would be always adaptive, or why always the same-sex behaviour would tend to be the way to achieve a K reproductive strategy, where other alternative ways could eventually do the same. Not that I think that they would purposefully avoid to evolve in this direction, but it would be weird that some species just don't mate that much, reducing the number of offspring per time, without needing to actively engage in non-reproductive sex.
Also, if the natural selection theory was true in its entirely, then the male would have been sufficiently feminised and the female sufficiently masculinised in order to make them more compatible with each other. This is exactly what happens in birds --- who have a heterosexual biological make-up.
I don't see how it's even predictable, why more less sexual dimorphism would be more adaptive, or what do you mean by "compatible" and how that's adaptive.
Also it seems to suggest that sexual dimorphisms are driven not by between-sex sexual selection - which would select for less dimorphism, if i got it right, but by some sort of sexual selection between individuals of the same sex, somehow, or maybe by something completely different, which I just don't have any idea of what it could be.
Sex has been noted in species where sexual dimorphism has not taken place and reproduction is asexual. Of course this sex was with the same sex. This is a strong pointer that reproduction was not the basic or the primary purpose of sex.
That's one of the points I mentioned earlier where things may be a little bit confused...
I don't see any problem with that, but I also don't think that it dissociates sexual dimorphism of reproduction, if it's part of what you're suggesting.
Neither that reproductive "asexual sex" didn't came earlier than the non-reproductive asexual sex. But I don't strongly doubt that too, although I can guess that there's some reproductive function to that.
And that this non-reproductive same-sex sex has a strong biological value --- otherwise why is it there? This then would go against what Darwin claimed about sexuality. If this is indeed true, then science should start trying to find the significance of same-sex bonds rather than dismissing it to shield Darwin or trying to find the 'reason' for so-called 'homosexuality' as if it were an anomaly.
What's the specific claim?
I don't see any problem with homosexuality being an anomaly in the sense that's not modal, supposing it's not modal (you seem to disagree).
I also don't think that there's any problem if it's totally not "natural", in the sense that's not biologically determined but something by nurture. It also can have the fulfill the same biological functions, advantages, even if there's just some "developmental room" to the individual be one thing or another.
Anyone who condemns homosexuality by saying that's "not natural" theoretically should do the same with water glasses and go to drink water in rain pools or rivers, with the hands.
Although I couldn't fully understand the last para (sorry I get easily bounced by scientific terminologies!), I suggest that -- as we already know that same-sex behaviour was present before sexual dimorphism took place.....After the species evolved into male and female, sex was chosen as THE way to reproduce. But the original sex for bonding remained in place for the same-sex.
What I meant is that the everything suggests that sexual dimorphisms, from anisogamy to genitalia, evolved to reproduction, not to engage in some sort of similar but non-reproductive activity.
How do you suggest that the different genitalias evolved?
Because I have the impression that according to what you say, sexual dimorphism is totally pointless, and should never have evolved at all. All species would remain asexual or hermaphrodites.
In other words sex, which was earlier only for the same-sex got divided into two parts:
- Sex for reproduction -- which was between male and female. But this sex was kept only for reproduction, it did not have much bonding value or a long lasting pleasure value (as evident from observation of the wildlife!)
- Sex for bonding --- which continued to be between the same-sexes even in the newly formed male sex.
So, the reason of the split and the nature of the split is what I can't understand.
Why there isn't just one sex that does both the reproduction and the bonds?
I'll come back to the topic later, got to go back to work