Reply #66: Homosexuality isn't always unsuccessful or maladaptive [View All]

[scottxyz]

To take an example from the animal kingdom (see Bruce Bagemihl's book "Biological Exuberance", as well as some writings by Konrad Lorenz):

Among ducks, who tend to mate for life, there will often be a pair of male ducks who exhibit what we would call homosexual behavior: courting and nesting together.

Of course, biologically they can't reproduce. But in many cases a female with be attracted to one of them, and will wait to run into him sometime, and may manage to get impregnated by him.

These three ducks will then establish a three-parent family. Because the two males are often among the healthier, stronger males in the area, and because it is now a three-parent family including two healthy strong males, they will often end up with some of the better "nesting real estate" and that family will be quite well-fed and protected. This is highly advantageous to the ducklings of course.

This is just one example from the vast array of species exhibiting "homosexual behavior" in nature, and it explodes the myth (essentially misogynist and homophobic in origin) that there is something "maladaptive" in an evolutionary sense about homosexuality.