I'm more interested in the biology. Traits counterproductive to passing on your genes should biologically weed themselves out without any government persecution.
This is OT from the specific discussion on the tread, but I want to say that there is no imperative that they should. The idea that people are just machines for the expression of genes is total bollocks. One thing we can observe time and again throughout history is that humans constantly overcome specific "reproductive disadvantages" they have. Because we have things such as reason, civilization, tools, society: the "fittest" does not depend on any specific trait and the "human environment" is ever changing. The use and abuse of simple biological concepts on the political discussions of humans and society always pisses me off - this is bad science, people! Bad as in incompetent.
For reproductive and evolutionary purposes, being gay is quite obviously an inferior biological trait. Denying this is almost like denying climate change.
Funny that you should put it that way. I'm happy to deny it.
Just to put one gaping hole on your theory: humans have far, far more sex that that necessary for reproductive purposes. Not that it from there and start drawing consequences. Hint: the first is that "having less sex with members of the opposite sex" has no bearing on reproduction, so long as it doesn't fall to "having no sex". Other notable consequences is that sex serves
other purposes among humans and those also have an influence on reproduction as they impact on the social conditions on which the individual lives. But this is going into the whole "history of sex" thing which is still not well studied prior to the modern age.
Oh I don't know so much. Didn't the Ancient Greeks think that women were OK but not as good as the real thing?
The greeks were weird. No one knows how the ordinary greeks thought. We can infer some things but it's not clear when they wrote of relations between males just what was and wasn't "sexual" as we understand it now. Certainly ****ing around with many men was frowned upon - which means that it happened! Likewise for older men. Women were probably not much mentioned just because
they were overlooked by the writers in a male-oriented society but I
guess that most sex was heterossexual then as now and people got whatever kind they liked.
And I suspect that, outside of the Churches' official doctrines maybe, being homosexual didn't become really stigmatized in the West until the C19th.
(A suspicion that I'm basing on nothing, of course. Just that human beings don't fundamentally change all that much.)
It was stigmatized in Rome, the church picked up from that more than from jewish traditions. Church positions on the subject didn't had much of an impact on daily practical life until the reformation and counter-reformation and even afterwards only punished what was
public: inquisitors wanted to make sure no one challenged the church by disobeying
in public, but had neither the resources not the inclination to persecute what people did without witnesses. Those, should they bother to confess to their priest, would be given the usual penances - and carry on.
, variety has increased but it does not make up for quantity).
