@stevecook172001,
stevecook172001 wrote:So, tell me Joe
How does genetics work?
Let's take a look at what you wrote. First, you state:
Quote:If we make the assumption, as the science seems to indicates, that homosexuality has a strong genetic component to it, then the supression of it will casue such individuals to go on to have unhappy heterosexual marriages where they have children. Children who will also inherit a behavioural tendency towards homosexuality.
That assumes that homosexuals are only produced when one or both parents are homosexual. But we know that can't be true. Although it was true in the past that social pressures forced many closeted homosexuals into heterosexual unions, those pressures have eased in the past few decades, and so presumably fewer homosexuals are being pressured into getting married and having children. There has been at least one full generation to test out the theory, and so we should expect to see fewer homosexual youths today than in the past. Yet it appears that there has been no decline in the number of homosexual youths, or at least none that I'm aware of. So it can't be true that homosexuals are only being produced by closeted homosexuals.
Furthermore, it suggests that homosexual parents only have homosexual children, and we know that's not true either. If it were true, then homosexuals would only have homosexual siblings, and we know that's not the case. So saying that children who have one or two gay parent(s) "will also inherit a behavioral tendency towards homosexuality" shows a misunderstanding of genetics. Two blond-haired parents, after all, can still have a brown-haired child.
But perhaps you're assuming that homosexuality is like a genetic disease, where there are "carriers" of homosexuality who aren't actually homosexuals but who can pass on the "gay gene" to their offspring. We can compare homosexuality, then, to a disease like hemophilia, which is also a recessive gene passed on by non-hemophiliac carriers and which also inhibits reproduction, albeit for entirely different reasons. Indeed, it has only been recently that hemophiliacs have lived long enough to reproduce. Prior to the relatively recent advances in medicine, however, it was extremely rare for hemophiliacs to live into their 20s, so there weren't a lot of hemophiliacs getting married and having hemophiliac children. Nevertheless, hemophiliacs continued being born to parents who had recessive genes for hemophilia.
For the geneticist, it doesn't really matter if an inherited genetic condition kills someone before he/she can reproduce or causes that person to enter into affective relationship that is incapable of reproduction. The end result is the same: there's no passing the gene onto the next generation. That doesn't mean, however, that the condition disappears. If that were the case, then both hemophilia and homosexuality would have died out centuries ago, yet we know that's not true.
We can assume, then, based on the way the whole sex thing works and on the expressed affective preferences of gays and straights, that the primary producers of homosexual children are heterosexual parents, just as the primary producers of hemophiliac children are non-hemophiliac parents. So it's unlikely that forcing closeted homosexuals into heterosexual unions would increase the number of homosexual children to any large extent.
Furthermore, when you write:
Quote:Thus, by repressing homosexuality, organised religion actually serves to increase its prevelance.
we know that can't be the case. First, on a purely factual basis, it assumes that closeted homosexuals would prefer to enter into heterosexual unions rather than choose some other method of dealing with societal pressures. Second, it assumes that homosexuals, once in those unions, would actually have children, which, given their preference for homosexual sex, seems rather counter-intuitive at best. Third, if societal repression causes closeted homosexuals into heterosexual unions where they produce homosexual children, then we should be seeing a lot fewer homosexuals once those societal strictures are eased, yet we have seen those strictures loosened in the past two decades without any corresponding decrease in the gay population.
