Do you agree with the Kinsey scale of human sexuality?

[Brad]

Originally Posted by jaycee

Homosexuality is an occurrence of genes "misfiring" - genes promoting a behaviour that won't actually promote the survival of the individual's genes. So in that sense it should be clear cut heterosexuality or homosexuality, as you (presumably) won't have genes that promote behaviour somewhere in between (although there could perhaps be genes that basically say "be attracted to any member of your species").

But not all genes are inherited as discrete units (e.g. blue vs brown eyes) but instead exist on a spectrum. The most common example of this is height. There is no single gene where allele A stands for "tall" and allele B for "short." (And how would you define "short" and "tall" anyway?) You don't end up with either a short or tall kid or even one with the average of the parents' heights. Instead height exists on a continuous spectrum, with over 50 genes contributing to its outcome, a very complex process that is still little understood. You could, factoring in outliers, have a child of basically any height. And while environment can influence height, the role it plays varies greatly. For example, 2 boys (not identical twins) born from the same parents, raised in the same environment, fed the same diet, could still grow up with great differences in height.

I say all that to say...perhaps human sexuality functions the same way as height. It's probably not a matter of A or B like eye color. Instead of a "gay gene," multiple genes may contribute varying degrees of influence into a person's final sexuality. And it's what type of information from one gene and how it interacts with the information from all the other genes that ultimately determines the final outcome, and perhaps that is how you end up with varying degrees of bisexuality. And if that is the case, then perhaps as in the example of height, environment actually plays a much smaller role than we may have once thought.

Eh, just my 2 cents on a Sunday morning.

Brad