Welmer

Until I had kids I didn’t really think much about the issue of homosexuality. It seemed a bit odd, but not all that important. Things changed when I realized what a big issue it has become in schools, and then it started to bother me. Not only the political aspects of homosexuality, but the fact that it doesn’t seem to make any sense from a social or biological standpoint. I was mystified by it, and none of the explanations I came across were satisfactory.

Having grown up in Seattle, and partly on Capitol Hill, the gay center of the Northwest United States, I have naturally been exposed to many gay people. Some have been friends, some neighbors, and very many simply part of the crowd. From my observation and from what they have told me themselves, they are different from other people. Not just in their sexual orientation, but in their very nature as well.

The way they walk, talk and carry themselves differs subtly. Perhaps the ability to pick up on these cues is what is known as "gaydar." Some gay men can mask their homosexuality very well, but when you get to know them it invariably emerges in one form or the other. A certain softness sets in at times, or perhaps a tendency to gush over things like women do. Whatever it is, one can’t escape the feeling that there is a difference, however hidden, in the way their minds work.

Some people say homosexuality is a choice. I cannot accept that explanation. Every straight man should know how little control he has over his own sexual desires, so why should it be different for homosexuals? Are they endowed with the ability to switch their sexuality on or off at will? That is very doubtful, so the most likely explanation is that there is something different in the architecture of their minds.

But why would that difference occur? It just doesn’t make sense. Genetically, socially and biologically speaking it’s a dysfunctional trait. But it’s been around for at least thousands of years, which seems to defy the idea of natural selection. So it can’t be a mere aberration; there must be some logic behind it.

Since the gay pride movement, homosexuality has come out of the closet and people have begun to discuss it openly. A multitude of theories has sprung up to explain its origin, and finally it appears that we are closing in on the answer. Thanks to the work of dedicated biologists, geneticists and doctors, a fuzzy picture is starting to emerge. It is necessarily unclear, because the environment in which we develop, the fertile womb, is more mysterious than the Martian atmosphere, and our understanding of genes and how they work is still very limited. But thanks to much research and a few recent discoveries, certain genetic and biological relationships between homosexuality and other traits have become established.

To open up the latest discoveries to interested laymen such as myself, many of whom could probably contribute to a better understanding of the subject, I have gathered together a number of findings and the work of some important biologists and geneticists, and I am in the process of organizing these sources into what I hope will be a coherent, reasonable essay on the best ideas yet concerning the causes of, and reasons for, homosexuality.

The most intriguing finding I have made is that homosexuality is probably the result of a genetically advantageous adaptation. It may also be linked to different reproductive strategies that have evolved in geographically disparate populations, but this is the most speculative idea I’ve come up with on the subject. Nevertheless, it appears to me that this idea is also on the minds of some scientists, but they dare not mention it, so I, with nothing to lose by doing so, will happily take credit for it. In addition to explaining the technical side of things, I’d like to add some interesting historical background for the benefit of those of us who are not sufficiently stimulated by scientific matters.