Response to article “Homosexuality As A Manifestation of An Infectious Disease"

This article is a response to a post made by @kyriacos titled “Homosexuality As A Manifestation of An Infectious Disease, an article that looks at homosexuality from an evolutionary perspective and argues that the sexual orientation is a disease caused by the feline parasite toxoplasma gondii (TG). @kyriacos suggests that the parasite alters the psyche of men making them more attracted to other males as well as being more promiscuous.

I will say that the theory is an interesting read in that it has a sort of sci-fi element to it. A strange parasite infecting an individual and changing their psyche is a cool idea. But making them gay? That’s where it goes off the rails for me personally. Though the overall concept is interesting, I personally think it would have been better suited in a fictional story rather than an explanation of a natural human behavior. But that’s just me.

I like @kyriacos’ overall approach of taking a “birds eye view” on a seemingly controversial subject in order to have a discussion. Sharing bizarre ideas can be interesting and a lot of fun overall. However, I personally find the theory itself to be extremely flawed and feel compelled to offer another perspective on the matter. Rather than creating a thread and commenting within @kyriacos’ post, I have decided to offer up this article as a rebuttal to their theory.

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First and foremost the @kyriacos article looks at the topic of homosexuality from a biological and evolutionary perspective alone, which in itself makes it severely limiting as it ignores the many complexities of human behavior that relate to things like an individual’s unique psychology and sociological factors, among other things. @kyriacos creates a further limitation by viewing the topic through an additional lens of reproductive utility. Though a hypothesis needs to narrow its focus, for me this has the effect of making an extremely complex issue very one dimensional. Given that the human species is a social animal, social factors will always be a contributing factor to any behavior, so I personally do not believe that something like homosexuality can be explained entirely through biology or evolutionary principles. The theory also appears to ignore homosexuality within females, as well as among other species, focusing solely on male human homosexuality. @kyriacos offers no explanation for these discrepancies which leads me to assume that they are excluded simply because they do not jive with their theory. Though there may be variances to the development of homosexuality among species as well as the sexes, to think that it occurs because of two very separate and distinct mechanisms is for me a bit farfetched, especially when the theory for one of the sexes involves something as extreme as mind altering parasites.

Moving on to my next point I would like to point out that early on in their article @Kyriacos asks the following question:

If the “love concept” that is formed is a natural occurrence, why are gays so much more promiscuous?

For me this begs the question, “more promiscuous them who?” While there may be some truth to the idea that gay men tend to be more promiscuous then their straight male counterparts (pending statistical sources to verify) this statement is nonetheless a gross overgeneralization. It appears to pigeonhole all individuals with a homosexual orientation into one stereotypical category. It does not however, take into account the fact that not all gay men are promiscuous. It also appears to make the assumption that people of a heterosexual orientation are not at all promiscuous, which is simply not true either. As such, the very idea here appears to ignore the fact that monogamy and promiscuity, like all human behaviors, are relative terms for a behavior that exists on a continuum. Within the heterosexual and homosexual populations some individuals are more promiscuous then others, so to say that all homosexuals are more promiscuous is quite obviously an overgeneralization error.

Similarly, the assumption of promiscuity also seems to suggest that the behavior is a biological characteristic of the individual rather than being based on social constructs. It appears that @kyriacos is suggesting that homosexuals are more promiscuous then heterosexuals because the TG parasite causes them to be this way. However, if the behavior of promiscuity is caused by TG or if it is biological in nature, then how does @kyriacos explain the behavior of promiscuity among heterosexual individuals such as those who are single, young, who have a lot of fame or money (i.e. cases of promiscuous rock stars, athletes, wall street executives...etc) or men whom live in societies where women have less rights then men and are treated more like property?

@kyriacos does not offer any sources to back up the statistics presented in their post, some of which are a bit hard to believe, however the theory does have a sort of logical flow about it that does make it a compelling argument. The reader is sort of lead along the garden path, so to speak, to a final conclusion that to some may be believable. However, the theory is complete speculation and it relies solely on correlational evidence. As such, I feel compelled to point out that though correlation suggests that a relationship exists between two variables, it does not in any way suggest causation.

In life in general, many seemingly random variables tend to be correlated in some way. But this does not suggest that one variable causes an effect on another variable. To demonstrate this point I offer the well-known example of homicide rates and ice cream, which suggests that homicide rates tend to increase alongside the sales of ice cream. As ice cream sales go up, so do homicide rates. Does this mean that ice cream sales somehow have an effect on crime or cause homicide? Well...no. All it means is that there is a correlation (or relationship) between the two variables. Likely it is some other unknown or unforeseen variable that is actually causing the effect. In the case of homicide and ice cream perhaps it is warmer weather? For instance, people tend to buy more ice cream when the weather is warm. Warmer weather also makes people spend less time in their homes which leads to more human interaction in public and more potential for altercations between people to occur. So when @kyriacos makes statements such as

Toxoplasma likely infects the fetus of pregnant mothers, making the baby more likely to be male, permanently altering the baby's brain to create sexual attraction to men.

one should take that level of speculation with a grain of salt and be open to the more likely scenario that some mediating factor may be playing a role in this relationship. Any number of unseen circumstances could play a role in this occurrence. For instance, perhaps there is something about male fetuses that makes them more likely to survive a TG infection compared to female fetuses?

The last part of the @kyriacos article talks about “homosexual disgust” as being an aversion to getting the TG parasite. On the one hand it is sort of an interesting idea, but then again it more so just comes across as a weak attempt at a justification for homophobia. Disgust in things like feces and rotting flesh for instance, tend to be quite universal among humans but I personally do not believe we can say that disgust for homosexuals is universal. I seriously doubt the statistic offered by @kyriacos that suggests that 50% of the population is homophobic. As such, how does @kyriacos explain why unlike disgust towards feces, which is quite common, disgust towards homosexuality only exists among a small portion of the human population? More so, if disgust were a mechanism to avoid getting the TG parasite wouldn’t most humans be disgusted by cats instead? TG is a feline parasite after all…

A much simple explanation to “homosexual disgust” is that some people seem to fear ways of being that are different then their own and/or what they do not understand. Another explanation still, is that homosexual disgust relates to groupthink, closemindedness, ego, the polarization of beliefs and values in society…etc.

Alternate Evolutionary Explanation for Homosexuality

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To conclude this article I have decided to offer my own alternative evolutionary explanation for the behavior of homosexuality, one that is ignored by @kyriacos. The explanation relates to “kin selection,” which is a well-established evolutionary idea that was formulated to explain altruistic behaviors among the human species. As a strategy, kin selection suggests that in some cases organisms favor the reproductive success of their relatives at the cost to their own survival. So although the behavior of homosexuality does not have reproductive utility that does not necessarily mean that the behavior does not have evolutionary utility. For instance, kin selection may suggest that a homosexual sibling who cannot bear its own offspring may increase the survivability of their kins offspring by contributing additional resources to their development and by assisting with the overall care of the child. This is not unlike the evolutionary theory on menopause which speculates that a woman may continue to live long after her days of fertility in order to increase the survivability of their offspring’s offspring. @kyriacos suggests that in terms of evolution, fertility and reproduction are all that matter. However, if this were true, then why do women continue to live long after menopause when they themselves become sterile and infertile? Perhaps it is because grandmothers contribute to the survivability of their grandchildren? Could this be the same for homosexual siblings?

Furthermore, many social and colony based organisms (ants, bees…etc) naturally have sterile or infertile individuals among the group that add to the survivability of the species overall. Not only do they provide labor and ingenuity that benefits the group as a whole but their infertility may also act as a sort of population control. One could argue that a natural mechanism of population control becomes extremely important when overpopulation threatens the existence of the entire species. As such, in a species like human, which allows their population to continue to expand indefinitely despite an increased threat to their overall survivability, wouldn’t it makes sense that nature would install a natural form of population control in the form of a group of individuals who cannot naturally reproduce?

I’m just speculating here. I do not have the answer for why certain behavioral traits exist in nature. However, I personally believe that the two examples above are more plausible then a feline parasite altering the mind of male humans in order to make them more attracted to their own sex and more promiscuous. But that’s just me.

I probably didn't do a very good job explaining my point with the statement about psychology and sociology. I didn't mean to say that sociology plays a larger role in homosexuality then biology. I personally believe that an individuals sexual orientation is probably largely based on biological factors. What I was trying to demonstrate was that an evolutionary lens that solely focuses on reproduction is extremely limited in scope. I personally do not believe that the sole purpose of life is to reproduce. I believe that there are likely other factors at play, especially in the cases of social species that live in large groups. In other ape species, not all males get to reproduce, only alphas gain access to females. Does that mean that nature made a mistake in allowing multiple males to be born into the group? Not in my opinion. Perhaps extra members are there to care for offspring or to fight against rival groups. Just a few examples of possibilities. The article that my post is based on also discussed other issues beyond sexual orientation itself, such as promiscuity. The statement about sociology was also meant to point out that some human behaviors are influenced by sociological factors. I think that promiscuity is probably more based on social constructs then biological factors, except for maybe in its relation to executive functions like impulse control of the individual.

Sorry, my article probably wasnt clear about any of that. So thanks for your comment and allowing me to clarify a little. I hope that makes more sense.

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