What do different cultures tell us
about homosexuality?
The huge variety of sexual expressions in different cultures sharing essentially the same genes shows genetic influence is minimal.
In 1994, an Italian-American geneticist, Cavalli-Sforza,
published a huge genetic atlas;the outcome of a monumental study of the genetic characteristics of different ethnic groups. He found that the human race was remarkably homogeneous, genetically. The more genes his team studied, the more they found all ethnic groups shared them. Cavalli-Sforza eventually studied fifty genes, and found that all ethnic groups had most of them. His conclusion was that, in spite of superficial differences, e.g skin colour, the different races are essentially the same genetically. Later work shows in fact, that something between 99.7%and 99.9%of the genes in any two unrelated people are the same.
If all ethnic groups share almost all their genes, we can make two assumptions about any behaviour that is claimed to be genetically produced:
• It will be very predictable, very specific and similar all over the globe.
• It will be present at roughly the same percentage in all cultures.
We also know that many genes, maybe hundreds, are involved
in human behaviours, and that behaviours affected by many genes will change very slowly over very many generations.
That is, they will be very stable for centuries, with only minimal changes from generation to generation. This is true not only in families, but also in cultures.
But if we look at homosexuality, we find none of the characteristics of genetic properties.
• There is a huge variety of homosexual practices between cultures and even within them.
• The prevalence of homosexuality has varied considerably in different cultures. In some cultures, it has been unknown; in others, it has been obligatory for all males.
• There have been, and are, rapid changes in homosexual behaviour, even over a lifetime. Not only that, but entire types of homosexuality have disappeared over the course of just a few centuries.
In fact, anthropologists have found such huge variations in
heterosexual and homosexual practice from culture to culture, and such sudden changes in sexual practice and orientation, even over a single generation, that they mostly want to say that all sexual behaviour is learned. In the words of one writer J. Rostand, “In the secret coming together of two human bodies, all society is the third
presence.”
http://www.mygenes.co.nz/PDFs/Ch6.pdf
Interesting post, and makes logical (and biological) sense.
If people were born homosexual, then there would never be any switching to hetero from homo. There is overwhelming evidence that such switches occur voluntarily.
This just shows the ignorance of the author.
It is a comprehensively irrelevant statement. The question is how much difference the .1% to .3% genetic difference makes.
When it comes to genes, little differences make big differences.