Is homosexuality an evolutionary mistake?

I don't think evolution makes mistakes, or has successes....it just produces organisms that are better or worse able to live in an environment.

Let's say female humans evolved with the capcity to give birth to 5 or 6 humans, every other year. At one point that would have been fine if most of them died before reaching an age where they could breed.

Today? We'd be incredibly overpopulated, and would have long ago exhausted our resources.

In a case like that, being a homosexual would be advantageous.

If every hetersexual disappeared tomorrow, humans wouldn't cease to exist, even in the absence of technology, like in vitro fertilization.

Because we also evolved with large brains, the lesbians and gays would realize and accept they would just have to, on occassion, take one for the gipper and have sex with each other. In fact, children might then be far healthier since the sexual couple, without having an emotional attachment would choose each other based on health and intelligence preferences.

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I would like to say that I will crib liberally from "The Moral Animal: Why We Are The Way We Are." by Robert Wright, which I strongly recommend.

In decades gone by, biologists would have said homosexuality is a bit like the sterile ant: rather than directly passing on there genes there was a sort of indirect benefit by helping a close relative maximise their reproductive fitness.
But this doesnt seem quite correct- homosexuals do not devote their lives to close relatives, they are independant human beings, and sterile ants don't falll in love with other sterile ants as human homosexuals would (with other homosexuals that is, not with sterile ants....).
It seems it must start from the sort of bi-sexual gratification that bonobos have, where they engage in genital rubbing as a sign of friendliness. Some sort of vestige such as this may have become homosexuality in the correct social environment. Just think of heterosexual men in jail.
There most probably isn't a gay gene, but rather a gene that is more likely to make the bearer gay under the right condition, just as there is no such thing as a 'football' gene but maybe, say, a gene for strength.
The gene(s) which influences homosexuality probably served some other purpose in the human past, but in todays environment manifests itself as homosexuality in the correct environment

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Quincy wrote:

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But this doesnt seem quite correct- homosexuals do not devote their lives to close relatives, they are independant human beings, and sterile ants don't falll in love with other sterile ants as human homosexuals would (with other homosexuals that is, not with sterile ants....).[/[/i]

This made me laugh so hard- just the mental picture it paints is priceless- and I thought- how would the person know that ant was sterile? And was sterility what drew them to the ant.... Laughing

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Just think of heterosexual men in jail.

A heterosexual man in jail who has sex with another male is still heterosexual- he's just lonely and sexually frustrated. Someone who is homosexual would still choose to have sex with someone of the same sex even when there are people of the opposite gender available.

I guess in order to prove it's some sort of mutation, you'd have to have measureable evidence that the incidence with which it occurs in the population has risen over generations. Do you have any info as to whether that's true or not? It seems that everything I've heard seems to suggest the occurrence has been pretty steady at around 10% of the population. But I don't know how long they've been collecting accurate data- or whether if in the past, particularly in places where it's majorly taboo- getting accurate data was even within the realm of possibility