Just a damned minute. "Being gay is a genetic or developmental defect," is not a true statement! Being gay is NOT a defect, developmentally or genetically, any more than, say, let-handedness is a defect. It is NOT comparable, furthermore, to Down's syndrome or retardation, or even to color-blindness, which ARE defects. To help you to wrap your mind around it, think of what left-handedness meant to a (normally homosexual) ancient Greek: A curse, a sign of twisted moral inferiority, something hopefully that could be bred or beaten out of children--and an affront to the community as well: stepping over somone's doorstep with the left foot first, was a deadly insult comparable to calling his mother a whore. Silly Greeks. Silly you.

Likewise, what you find "obvious from an evolutionary perspective," is actually not obvious. In the first place, whether it should or it shouldn't be, very little human sex is about reproduction. Straight or gay, we all do it because it's fun and it feels good. Even you, I imagine, do not approach your sexual partners with the statement that, "Well, now it's time to get you pregnant!" Even animals seldom behave as practically as that. Consider how very many non-reproductive behaviors, sexual and non-sexual, there are in all known species above the earthworm; and conversely, how many homosexual behaviors are in fact beneficial, aids to the reproduction of the species as a whole. Lesbian pair-bonding among bears and sea-gulls, for example, and male homosexual pairing among dolphins, cheetahs, geese, and black swans, are significantly more advantageous for the care and protection of their respective species' offspring than "normally" heterosexual family units. And where would bees (and ants, and mole-rats) be without non-reproducing, "developmentally retarded" females?

Is this going to change your mind, Gunsmoke? Are you going, now that you think about it, to go gay? Probably not. But you might have gay sex--with another straight man, of course. According to the latest research, ten to forty per cent of self-identified straight men do have sex with other men. The Kinsey estimate of 37% is probably pretty close. If you do, I hope you practise safer sex. The sad truth is, there's still no cure for AIDS.