The evolutionary benefits of gay uncles

[starroute]

This article is interesting in itself -- but what really strikes me is the way it counters the anti-gay marriage people who argue that the biological basis of marriage is to raise children successfully. That's actually true to a degree -- but it's only a small part of the story.

The emerging picture seems to be that raising human children take an extensive support system. Fathers help a lot -- which is why marriage became standard somewhere along the line in our evolution. But so do grandmothers. And apparently so do gay uncles.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100204144551.htm

Male homosexuality doesn't make complete sense from an evolutionary point of view. It appears that the trait is heritable, but because homosexual men are much less likely to produce offspring than heterosexual men, shouldn't the genes for this trait have been extinguished long ago? What value could this sexual orientation have, that it has persisted for eons even without any discernible reproductive advantage?

One possible explanation is what evolutionary psychologists call the "kin selection hypothesis." What that means is that homosexuality may convey an indirect benefit by enhancing the survival prospects of close relatives. Specifically, the theory holds that homosexual men might enhance their own genetic prospects by being "helpers in the nest." By acting altruistically toward nieces and nephews, homosexual men would perpetuate the family genes, including some of their own.

Two evolutionary psychologists, Paul Vasey and Doug VanderLaan of the University of Lethbridge, Canada tested this idea for the past several years on the Pacific island of Samoa. They chose Samoa because males who prefer men as sexual partners are widely recognized and accepted there as a distinct gender category -- called fa'afafine -- neither man nor woman. The fa'afafine tend to be effeminate, and exclusively attracted to adult men as sexual partners. This clear demarcation makes it easier to identify a sample for study.

[howard112211]

1. K&R for talking science to stupid.

[DeSwiss]

2. I've speculated as much with regard to this very idea for years.

I've even posted as much here at DU long ago. The survival of the species through the evolutionary process can mean different roles for the individuals within a species. Everyone need not have the same job of procreation. We see it in other species and we are no different in our species' needs.

- K&R

[FarCenter]

3. Since the natural situation would be polygamy, there are a lot of excess males in the tribe

So male-male sexuality among the excess males would be a good thing.

[The Straight Story]

4. Doh - just posted this and did not see your earlier posting - sorry about that

:) Dups Happen!

[keith the dem]

5. The notion that gay people are "anti-family" is pure BS

Everyone I know that has a gay aunt or uncle has benefited enormously. My wife's gay aunt was very generous and giving. My wife grew up in a large family. This aunt gave her the help and attention that her parents did not have the time or money for.

I belong to a church that has an "open and affirming" policy. The gay members of our church have been very generous with their time and money. I cannot stress what a blessing they have been for me and especially my daughters.

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. Interesting and plausible.

... although I didn't realize that "the trait is heritable".

[Missy Vixen]

7. As I've mentioned here before, my husband was raised by his uncle and uncle's partner

I'm glad to see yet another study affirming that children need dedicated, loving adults as parents, and those parents don't need to be heterosexual.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

8. And gay fathers, an underestimated genetic contributor

Male same-sex orientation is a striking an evolutionary question so it is right to speculate and study.

But the quality of the theorizing usually seems lacking to me.

We fret about how gay men could survive the evolutionary scythe... well, let's ask Leonard Bernstein's kids. (Charles Darwin doesn't care so much how primarily-attracted Bernstein was to his wife. Evolution cares how well he took care of his children.)

The uncle-hypothesis, which is surely true in many instances seems, to assume that a tangential effect is required... to assume that in the primitive world being gay would have been a major barrier to having surviving offspring.


Take a few points:

Many (most?) gay men have had sex with a woman... it's not so unusual.

Gay men can be interested in child-rearing (compatible with the uncle hypothesis)

Gay men are capable of distinguished hunting/fighting/military performance

Hypothesize a survival advantage in a violent world for strongly bonded men and for those men's family members (including wives and children) and a good hypothesis falls into place.

Heather having two mommies and two daddies is potentially potent stuff in a world marked by continual hazard and violence, and if there is a survival advantage for the kids it really doesn't much matter whether the mother-father pair is "that into each other."

Pre-agricultural human groups are small; 100-200 people. In small groups of hunter-gatherers out wandering and surviving it is not obvious that a tribe was a collection of nuclear families.

I don't know what pre-historic sexual/bonding arrangements were like and neither does anyone else. We are projecting some deep assumptions backward.

I am not saying all cavemen were gay. I am saying that we have records of or observations of so many different types of tribal arrangement that there's no reason to assume much.

Male Sparta was a gay-oriented society of some sort. The men had wives but only saw them just long enough to impregnate them, then went back to the men's place. Growing boys were taken from their mothers and raised by the men, probably a sex objects. A tribe in New Guinea did exactly the same thing... a separate building for men and boys with the boys in a sexual role. Ancient Romans, Mamaluks... there are a LOT of ways for genes to pass merrily along with a lot of gay men in the group.

As far as survival/evolution is concerned those Spartans and New Guineans were societies of husbands and wives having children that survived to marry and reproduce, which is all it takes to keep the ball rolling.

And if there is a military advantage then we can forget about whether dad is around to warm the bottle. The slightest military advantage means the genetic survival (or death) of most men and lot of women in a group.

Most of recent human evolution has been driven by extinction of whole groups, not subtle fitness traits.

We are all descended from one group. It wasn't the first group of a hominids we would call roughly human. We busted out of Ethiopia and in short order every single non homo-sapien, from France to Indonesian was dead. We seem to have killed them.

Some species are made up of only the descendants of critter who could eat some berry or another. But we are descended exclusively from a smallish group that somehow expanded to wipe out all global competitors. (The Cro-magnons who killed the Neanderthals and created the first great (extant) works of art--the cave paintings at Altamira and Lascaux, were black, by the way. We tore through Europe so fast there was no evolutionary time to change complexion. So all those traditional early cave-man pictures are wrong. When they found a skeleton in France they figured 'He's French... he probably looked like Gerard Depardieu.)

Maybe our tribe, the one that took over the world, was the FIRST tribe with a significant proportion of gay men. Seriously, if there was any military or hunting advantage to it, it would take off.

[Touchdown]

9. This is absolutely true! I'm a gay uncle and when my nephew and I are together

I taught him how to use a camera and compose shots the way a pro does. When I'm not around, he trips over a rock, falls on his face and got stitches on his forehead!

So there!:D