Gayness and Redundancy

My brother once challenged me to think about why, from a genetic standpoint, gayness might be appealing for the preservation of the race, and therefore survive as a orientation in the greater gene pool.

I have been convinced from a very young age that, much like the color of one's eyes, or a person's height, or a person's general disposition, gayness is genetically-based. That is to say, that it appears to me that homosexuality is a predisposition of a given percentage of humans. Without commenting on homosexuality as a lifestyle, I would like to expound on some thoughts that have occurred to me as why this might be so.

The first and most obvious reason why gayness might be not only tolerated from a evolutionary standpoint, but rather a purposeful outcome of X% of births, is that of redundancy. What does that mean?

In any stable system, one expects to see redundancy. For instance, a copier goes down at work, and there is another copier available (albeit accross the building). In this scenario, there is an interruption to the natural flow of the workplace, but the workplace and the flow of production are not interrupted. Or, let's say, a household has two cars. One breaks down and is taken to the shop. Now, for a couple days or so, the family has to share one car. It's a pain in the arse, but having two cars (or two copiers) means that while the normal flow of life is impeded, it is not interrupted. The system benefits from the essential insurance policy of redundancy.

Now, imagine a system in which all available men are paired up with all available women. In nature, the percentage of female births is roughly 51%-52% female to 48%-49% male. Given that X% of women perish in childbirth, this makes sense from a sustainability standpoint. In any event, as systems always tend toward equilibrium, we can say, all things being equal, in a given tribal community, isolated from the greater world, let's assume all available men are paired with all available women. There are no gay men or women. Let's say one of the women or one of the men vanish, prsumed to have drowned. The system (that is the community) is in a world of hurt: they have lost either a hunter or a gatherer, and yet the offspring still need to be fed, the preparation of food must still be met, the participation in communal life and responsibilities of the man and woman need to be satisfied for everybodies' sake. Without redundancy, how will this occur?

On the other hand, let's imagine a world, as I figure it must have been, where there happens to be a shaman. He was so appointed, in that coupling with a woman doesn't quite do it for him. So, he turns himself to something a bit more attractive in his mind's eye: that of being the spiritual leader of the community. In this manner, he may or may not sublimate his sexual orientation... but he does take his "strange disposition" (relative to the other men, anyway) which drives him from what all other men seem to want (a female partner) and turns it into a decided strength.

In this village, a similar mishap occurs, and the community is left without one of its members. Enter the stability provided by the shaman.

I am purposefully avoiding making any moral judgment on homosexuality. I am simply stating that there is at least one very plausable and purposeful reason for why gayness seems to be built into the system.

I could go on to speak of the sense among many that, in particular, many gay men, for example, seem to be a 3rd gender altogether. Neither entirely "male", nor entirely "female" in behavior. And, from a fundamental, strictly evolutionary sense, this makes complete sense to me.