You worte: "For example, current questions seem focused on the issue This is not quite accurate. With respect to the above exchanges between Brown and Anonymous, the question, which has not been pinned down nor agreed upon between the discussants, is about what does or does not oppose natural selection. Brown seems to have implied that only heterosexuality does not oppose natural selection. Anonymous has been arguing that heterosexuality may oppose, under some kinds of environmental conditons, natural selection when its relative frequency remains very high compared to non-heterosexual activity that does not conduce to reproduction. Moreover, the post originating this current exchange by Brown on 6/7/99 explictly stated that the issue was NOT a matter of homosexuality alone but rather a matter of heterosexuality versus a host of other forms of sexual expression including those that include heterosexuality (such as bisexuality and transsexuality); thus Dr. Brown's 6/7/99 posting contained these words: "And the question is not just limited to homosexuality, but includes bisexuality, transexuality, transgender identification, pedophilia, beastiality, and others." You are right that the discussion has not referred specifically to masturbation and birth control, but certainly those behaviors could be included as part of this general question under discussion about what behaviors do or do not oppose natural selection. And, of course, everything anyone ever does or says, not just those things having to do with science, has political implications more or less. That does not mean people should not do or say things. It only means we should be open to discussing the implications of what we say or do, the good points and bad points of what is said and done with respect to the impact on human beings, with a high degree of resepct for the happiness of all concerned. You later wrote: "Third, we would have to ask what are the motives in The motive is to understand what sexual behaviors do or do not favor or oppose natural selection and to discover if such a question can actually be answered in a well-reasoned manner. To fulfill this motive, it is necessary to explore these issues themselves. These are issues having to do with concepts of natural selection and the environemtal conditons under which one or another kind of selection takes place. Once we have discovered, if we do discover, what behaviors do or do not favor or oppose natural selection, it may or may be possible to explore what "mix of personality and environment lead to behaviors that do not oppose natural selection"--as Brown stated the matter. It would seem only right to not oppose natural selection, certainly; and this is your concern, namely that the use of the term "natural selection" is a stand-in for "right and wrong." But, as you imply, even if we knew what was right for the sake of natural selection, it may not be right to impose such behaviors on individual persons who are made happy by other kinds of behaviors. Indeed it may not even favor natural selection to make such impositions on particular individuals! That is, I have a very hard time seeing how a uniform, non-variable, universal, one-trait-fits-all formula for sexual behavior could favor natural selection if it effectively does away with randoma variation of sexual-preference traits. Such variation seems to be valuable for natural selection to be able to accommodate changing environments by altering reproduction levels by changing the relative frequency of heterosexual reproductive behaviors.
if homosexuality is right or wrong."
framing these questions."
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