I haven't read into much of the homosexual literature, but I don't understand how a self-deleting genetic expression (i.e. homosexual sex engage procreate) would be so prevalent amongst humans. In an evolutionary sense, it should be selected against because homosexual sex can't procreate, thus the genes won't be passed on.
Unless it's epigenetic and thus activates in certain conditions, how is biological deterministic homosexuality so prevalent?
1.) Read the selfish gene by Richard Dawkins, a gene isn't self-deleting if it can help reproduce itself. It doesn't need to do that using the exact organism of expression. For example drone hymenopterans don't reproduce, but they help reproduce the genes that created them.
I don't see how homosexuality helps with reproduction at all
I am not convinced this hypothesis is correct for human sexual deviancy even if it is theoretically possible, and even if it was true the sexual deviancy would be a secondary trait; not the one selected for.
Which hypothesis are you referring to?
The hypothesis is that sexual deviants don't form reproductive relationships. Being "freed" of their own batch of children yet saddled with the instinct to support their bloodline they help siblings, perhaps cousins too; with their kids.
The gene in the sexual deviant is selfishly promoting itself increasing the success rate of nieces and nephews.
To be a selective benefit this requires that the success rate is increased sufficiently to overcome the reduction of offspring. That in itself wouldn't be too surprising, our species is near the top of the "quality over quantity" pyramid when it comes to reproduction.
The reason I am not convinced is because somebody has got to have kids, which means the trait must at least be recessive, and even a recessive trait would have been isolated long ago.
Therefore we know that at most genetics is introducing a vulnerability to sexual deviancy, which is quite an unremarkable statement as everything that happens non-deterministically exists within the boundary of what genetics allows. To say it isn't genetically determined never means genetics has nothing to do with it.
3.) oromagi has formed conclusions about this matter, however I found it nearly impossible to confirm anything related to genetics due to paywalls (I really hate the idea of paywalls protecting scientific literature)
If you're able to get the DOI for the paper, you can bypass paywalls by putting the DOI into SciHub.
What a glorious idea SciHub appears to be. I will certainly try if I get some time this weekend.
If homosexuality isn't a choice and can't be change, but it's also not genetic, what then determines it?
Control systems beyond our conscious control. That can be the subconscious (which is probably the answer), or it could be gene switching (expressed proteins can change even with identical DNA), or it could be a pure chemical equilibrium of some complexity.
