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humans are a social species. A population has far more ability to create children than it has ability to raise children. Accordingly, there is no great need for each person to produce, so long as the population produces.

People who do not produce children are free from the burden of raising children. They can perform other productive acts. For example, designing ties.

In particular, a population can still produce children at the same rate if a significant number of men do not get tied down by raising and supporting children. Flexible social structures such as bigamy, polygamy, or the current one popular in the US, serial monogamy, permit even more people to be free from the cares of fatherhood, while others act as fathers for larger than average broods.

Consider the recent past. In ancient Thebes, there was an homosexual regiment called the Sacred Band. They were a military organization that fought Phillip, the father of Alexander the Great, to the death. They fought because noone would skulk from battle when their lover could see them. Phillip said (according to Plutarch) words to the effect that "such brave men can not have been immoral".

Setting men aside from reproduction is a strength for a society. In like manner, wise women were often also set aside, and were able to provide advice, help in child bearing, and provide some limited medical knowledge, because they did not have to devote their time to the care and raising of infants. Again, this is a strenth for a society, given that there is plenty of reproductive overcapacity.

Please allow me to summarize and consolidate what I perceive to be your proffered support, apparently in favor of homosexual behavior. If I have mischaracterized your presentations or intentions, please accept my apologies and make whatever corrections you feel necessary. For ease of reference, I have labeled my consolidations of your support points.

A. You have posited several implied points of support for the “libertarian” argument that the state should not interfere with private homosexual behavior between consenting adults. As an extension of this point, you also offered what appears to be support for the libertarian argument that society unnecessarily restricts individual sexual activity in general, e.g., first cousin marriages, and, by implication, restrictions are unnecessary for homosexual behavior.

B. Additionally, it seems that you have attempted to advance very limited support for the argument that homosexual behavior has some benefits for society (or potentially could). To this further goal you cite an ancient Theban military unit. Moreover, you imply through a libertarian reference to drug legalization and its potentially deadly impacts on addicts (“thinning the herd” and thus apparently benefiting society) that the diseases resulting from homosexual behavior would serve a similarly beneficial purpose.

C. Furthermore, it appears that you are attempting support a point that homosexual behavior does not necessarily damage society. Specifically, I deduce that you are positing that limited numbers of both males and females can be removed from the reproductive responsibility to society with no long-term ill effect thus permitting them to engage harmlessly in homosexual behavior.

Before I offer any counters to your support points and arguments, let’s establish some common terminology to avoid confusion.

Libertarianism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy which advocates individual rights and a limited government. Libertarians believe individuals should be free to do anything they want, so long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others. They further believe that the only legitimate use of force, whether public or private, is to protect those rights. For libertarians, there are no 'positive rights' (such as to food or shelter or health care), only 'negative rights' (such as to not be assaulted, abused, robbed, censored, etc.).

(This definition will ensure that my usage of the word, “libertarian,” will not be confused with members of a political party that has co-opted that name or European definitions that use the name to obscure references to what are truly anarchists.)

Using the above definition, it is obvious even the most ardent libertarian subscribes to what is called a “balance” of rights, e.g., your right to be unrestricted in swinging your arm ends where my nose begins. Exactly what rights infringe on the rights of others is often difficult to determine, e.g., does your right to enjoy loud music on your own property trump my right to enjoy peace and quiet on my property adjoining yours? I think you can see, even ardent libertarians could, and do, disagree on what rights trump others and where a balance is between competing rights.

With this prolog as a springboard, let me address your posits.

A. Philosophically, I do not disagree that society should not interfere with private, consensual behavior that harms no one. Such behavior is between the participants, their consciences and whatever moral code to which they subscribe. However, the philosophical argument fails on the questions of what are the rights of all involved or affected, what harms exist, where and to whom do they occur and what is the proper balance. Please refer to Post 131. While we may wish for an ideal, libertarian world where individual rights are perfectly balanced, it does not exist. Advocates of homosexual behavior are currently “inventing” rights and “demanding” that these “rights” be observed by all, without regard to balance against what the rights of others may be. This activity, alone, should make true libertarians be willing to take up arms against this affront to individual liberty. However, let me get directly to the counters to you argument:
Enough (a great many) practitioners of homosexual behavior do not let their behavior remain private and consensual. Consequently, they have brought the discussion of the balance of rights into the public/societal domain. Therefore, the discussion can no longer be restricted to a libertarian discussion about the balance of “individual” rights. Rather, the discussion must, now, at these advocates’ own behest, be a balance of “group” rights, i.e., theirs against all other groups in society. As their behavior contributes no useful input to society that is not available from other sources at potentially much lower societal costs and with much greater side benefits, society is quite correct to discourage, restrict or prohibit their behavior as it chooses in balancing all other perceived rights of any, and all other, groups.

B. There are no benefits to society from homosexual behavior that are not available through other sources at lower societal costs and greater side benefits. Consider your example of the homosexual Theban military unit (the Sacred Band) that fought against Philip of Macedonia. They were slaughtered to the last man and had no positive, material impact on the overall military performance of their army, i.e., they lost, big time. Their net benefit to Theban society was exactly zero. On your other point, the consideration that homosexual behavior “thins the herd,” contemplate that Hitler used the same philosophy (thinning the herd) with, arguably, much greater efficiency and without having to pay for any research into HIV/AIDS or expensive medical care. Nor, in the process, did the Nazi’s particularly worry about any special affirmative action rights, celebrations, or hiring practices for those “members of the herd being thinned.”

C. Homosexual behavior that is not kept private and consensual damages society. Refer to Post 131 and many others for the litany. I will concede your point that taking a limited number of males and females from their reproductive duties to society is not a huge detriment. Many are already removed by accident, disease, war, and other calamities as well as individual choice. However, as this point is not, and never was, the sole argument against homosexuality, the point does not negate the assertion that “homosexuality serves no useful purpose.”