What are homos for?

Evolutionary biologists ask why nature keeps making homosexuals, since the likelihood of their reproducing is lower than for ordinary child-begetting folks. How low probably varies a great deal. The very recent phenomenon of gayness, with a social identity, has allowed far greater numbers of homosexually inclined people to skip marriage and begetting than would likely be possible almost anywhere or any time in history. One non-homo friend of mine has lamented this new sociological escape route, since it removes from the gene pool a big chunk of men, at least some of whom exhibit notable gifts of body and spirit.

Most often the biologists come up with the Helpful Uncle theory, another male to support nephews and nieces. I doubt anyone will ever create a definitive answer. Why does nature make homosexuals might be up there with What Do Women Want?*

Some rude people, noting the nature keeps making all kinds of defective humans --schizophrenics, for example-- so it might be more of an imperfection in evolution rather than a design. One very rude theory is that it is caused by a yet-undetected virus.

A game I play sometimes on the subway or walking home from work is to extrapolate the conceit of the movie A Day Without A Mexican, where you instantly remove a whole population from, in this case, contemporary America and see what you've lost (or ridden yourself of!). It can be pretty unnerving and very unPC.

So if we removed all the gay men --I regularly exclude lesbians from these ruminations because even though my best female friend is a lesbian (!), as a group they do not seem parallel to homosexual men--
what more or less 3% of the population would we lose and/or rid ourselves of?

Two groups come to mind right away, decorators and mentors. Decoration and ornamentation seem to attract a lot of gay men. These range from a Michelangelo to the local store window dresser, florist or hairstylist. (If you extend the notion of decoration to certain types of entertainment, you'd find a lot of homo guys there, too.) And there seems to be a lot of gay men in the teaching and the clergy professions. Am I in the ball park here?

________________

My answer to this: "They want what they want when they want it, buddy."

I am pretty sure that my mother has had a strong role in shaping my sense of the feminine and one of the big differences for me, primitively true even if not empirically true, is that men are stable and predictable, while women are wildly labile. My mother's reality is whatever she decides it is at the moment and the idea of continuity seems alien to her, not unlike The Red Queen, who believes six impossible things before breakfast every day. My choice in female friends clearly shows a preference for women who are not labile. (My longest partnership, however, was with a man who lived on what seemed to me an emotional merry-go-round! I knew I was in trouble one day when we were arguing and I realized that he was Claire and I was Jack, mom and dad. Maybe even gay men can marry their mothers!)