Isn't homosexuality harmful from an evolutionary perspective?

anonymous asked:

Homosexuality /in general/ IS harmful though, evolutionarily speaking. If everyone was gay we could not continue as a species (obviously). To say flat out that it's harmless seems like a gross over simplification and jumps the gun.

No, homosexuality in general IS NOT harmful, evolutionarily-speaking or otherwise. First off, behaviors or tendencies are rarely if ever inherently disadvantageous or advantageous from an evolutionary perspective. What is advantageous is context-dependent, determined by the interplay between species and environment over long stretches of time. A behavior or trait might be advantageous for a certain species in certain environments, but might be altogether ruinous to another species in another environment. Secondly, there are many many examples of homosexual behaviors in nature. So it’s simply empirically false that homosexuality is evolutionarily harmful since it flourishes throughout the world. 

To say that ‘if everyone was gay we could not continue as a species’ is completely beside the point, as this is not something that has ever developed through evolution. Moreover, it’s false! We currently live in a world where, for example, artificial insemination exists. So, let’s imagine that we could snap our fingers and tomorrow every human being was suddenly homosexual (Alex Jones has recurring nightmares of this happening). Would this mean the inevitable demise of humanity as we know it?? No! We could, through technology, continue to propagate our species. On top of all this, the whole conversation so far has been assuming a pretty binary perspective on both sexuality and gender—when in reality things are much more complex and continuous than that! AND, if that weren’t enough, EVEN IF homosexuality was ‘evolutionarily harmful,’ this wouldn’t necessarily make it morally wrong. See my previous post about the Appeal to Nature fallacy.

So, I can indeed say flat out that homosexuality—IN ITSELF, as a consensual expression of sexuality, love, and romance—is harmless. Science will not help justify your homophobia.