Xref: utzoo sci.bio:3373 sci.med:18918 sci.psychology:3094
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnewsm!mls
From: mls@cbnewsm.att.com (mike.siemon)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.med,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: The persistance of homosexuality in a gene pool
Summary: not creationist, thank you
Keywords: homosexuality, history
Message-ID: <1990Jul30.235108.3207@cbnewsm.att.com>
Date: 30 Jul 90 23:51:08 GMT
References: <1990Jul23.022511.28161@mtcchi.uucp> <11095@netcom.UUCP> <21096@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Followup-To: sci.bio
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 41

In article <21096@duke.cs.duke.edu>, jag@cello.mc.duke.edu (John Graves) writes:

> Truly early humans cannot be judged on the basis of any symbolic artefacts
> that are known to exist at this time.  If we are to assume that man or woman
> understood the gestation period from first consciousness we are making a
> creationist assumption.

I think you are mistaking Mr. Wolfe's point, which I hardly took to be a
creationist one.  Indeed, I made the same point in email.  To the (quite
limited, as you rightly observe) extent we *have* evidence, the connection
is known.  That of course cannot carry back so far that the idea of *any*
conscious associations becomes problematic.

But the *assumptions* being made (not necessarily by Mr. Turpin, who is
generally circumspect, but by most of our contemporaries), without any
evidence at all, are that heterosexual desire in humans needs no explan-
ation.  That is hardly the case.  The fact is we *don't* know a damn
thing about the biopsychological basis of human sexuality, or much at
all about its social patterning -- even today, let alone in a past so
far distant that it becomes a question what was similar and what wasn't.

> We simply do not know anything about the sexual practices of early
> humans other than that heterosexual sex occurred.

This, at least, seems to be a reasonably sound statement. :-)  All the
rest of your contribution is the merest speculation.  And by mulling
over such speculations one may come up with ideas for empirical tests,
maybe even ones that can apply to old data, or by careful comparatives
apply to "all primates" or some such class.  But untested speculation
tends to be uncontrolled projection of ideologies -- witness the 19th
century speculations about "race."  What I would seriously urge is that
our current "ideas" about sexuality (hetero- and homo-) may be quite as
much without empirical foundation as the earlier notions of race.

The argument that "of course people were heterosexual or we wouldn't
be here" is either tautologically inane or totally devoid of evidence.
-- 
Michael L. Siemon			"I cannot grow;
m.siemon@ATT.COM			 I have no shadow
...!att!sfsup!mls		 	 To run away from,
standard disclaimer			 I only play"