Bradley Felton zim@pobox.com wrote:
> The remaining, non-gay male rats would surely be up to the task of keeping
> the females supplied with sperm, no?
Actually, you are right and I retract my position. Female pregnancies are the limiting factor in population, not male availablility.
> I think it's fair to say that if this trait offers no reproductive
> advantage in this scenario, it didn't evolve in this scenario, or *for this
> purpose*.
Agreed. I thought you were saying that the trait couldn't evolve. You emphasis clarified it for me.
> Which
I don't know about this. It implies that guys can't get dates because
there aren't enough females in the world, and that increasing the
dateable population increases dates. I would guess that other factors
would influence popularity more than mere numbers of partners.
> explains why disease was a limiting factor for this trait: since gays were
> having sex with other men as well as with women, they had more sex partners
> than straight males, hence they suffered disproportionately from STD's.
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