From this perspective, individuals having these tendencies to replicate their genes through sexual reproduction are perhaps “healthy,” the reasoning goes, because they conform to a natural process that all successful (sexual) life forms follow.
But let’s consider some complications with this perspective. First, many sexual people (even a few heterosexual biologists I know) do not have children—including many who do not forgo the mechanism of reproduction itself, sex—and thus fail miserably on this ultimate of biological imperatives. So, do they have a disorder or are they unhealthy?
Second, there is more than one way to skin a cat, evolutionarily speaking. As suggested in chapter 3, the replication of DNA does occur via asexual reproduction in a host of organisms. So, sexual reproduction is not the only natural process of reproduction. Moreover, aside from asexual reproduction occurring in simpler or phylogenetically older species, sexual reproduction is not the only game in town in other, more complex or recently evolved species—even in human beings! Individuals can potentially replicate their genes through other means than sexual reproduction—in particular, via kin-selection processes. In these processes, the replication of one’s genes occurs through kin or closely related relatives. Our relatives share our genes, and the closer the blood relation (e.g., brother or sister as compared to third cousin), the more genes in common. Thus, if our relatives replicate their genes (through, for example, sexual reproduction), we replicate ours, because a portion of their genes is, in fact, a portion of our genes. Kin-selection mechanisms are also adaptive (“healthy,” if you will) alternative strategies to replicate genes. So, even though sexual reproduction is probably the primary method by which human beings replicate their genes, it is not the only way gene replication can occur.
This kin-selection model of gene replication may provide an important answer to why homosexuality exists in humans. On the surface, homosexuality is a challenge to evolutionary types (e.g., biologists, evolutionary psychologists): Gay people don’t do sexual reproduction—or at least not to the extent that heterosexual people do—yet homosexuality has existed over time and across cultures and seems to have, at least partially, a genetic basis (Bailey, Dunne, & Martin, 2000; Hamer, Hu, Magnuson, Hu, & Pattatucci, 1993). So, how could “gay genes” ever compete with “straight genes,” if the latter find themselves in a group (i.e., breeders) that engages in sexual reproduction, whereas the former find themselves in a group that, on average, doesn’t?[32]
The answer may have to do with the kin of gay people. If a gay gene confers some kind of reproductive advantage when expressed in the relatives of gay people, then the gay gene could survive, even flourish, throughout evolutionary history. Recently, researchers have found evidence that gay men have female relatives who are especially fecund, tending to have a lot of children (Iemmola & Camperio-Ciani, 2009). Aha! So, even though gay men don’t breed like their heterosexual male counterparts do, their sisters may do so, and at a high rate relative to the sisters of heterosexual men, thus compensating for any loss to the gene pool from gay men. This suggests that there is indeed a gay gene (or genes) conferring some type of reproductive advantage in the female relatives of gay men. Some researchers have speculated that it may be a “man-loving” gene, which, when found in men, makes them gay, but which, when found in women, makes them particularly likely to be attracted to (and thus form heterosexual relationships with) men, leading to lots of offspring and hence lots of gay (or “man-loving”) genes. Even if there is a no “man-loving” gene making sisters reproduce more, a “gay” gene may still be of some advantage to an individual who carries this gene if it is associated with helping relatives’ children survive and reproduce. So, for example, a gay man may help raise his sister’s or brother’s children, and thus his genes are replicated through helping kin, even if his genes aren’t replicated sexually. Interestingly, there is some evidence for this mechanism in Samoan men with same-sex attraction, a group called the Fa’afafine (Vasey & VanderLaan, 2010). Samoan society is of some importance because it is likely closer than modern Western societies to the social and family relations that would have occurred when humans evolved.
As these examples attest, nature has myriad ways of creating and sustaining diversity, and what may seem like a genetic dead end, and thus biologically “unhealthy,” may not be. So, that someone simply does not reproduce through a traditional heterosexual process does not mean that they are maladapted from an evolutionary perspective. It may just mean that there is another evolutionary mechanism at work beyond sexual reproduction that replicates the individual’s genes.
There is also a broader point here: To say that something is adaptive is merely to say that it has evolutionary consequences in favor of gene replication. It is a description of a natural process of change over time. But as a description, should it bleed into moral reasoning? Evidence of an adaptation is not evidence of a moral (or even a “health”) imperative. To think otherwise is in a certain sense to fall victim to the naturalistic fallacy, a reasoning error that assumes that what is natural must also be good or right. There are, of course, many examples of natural processes that most people would not consider to be at all good or right or healthy. HIV/AIDS and murder are two examples. But there is also no inherent moral superiority in one set of genes over another merely on the basis that one set replicates itself more frequently than another. They are merely chemicals, after all, whether they replicate themselves or not.
The brain might deceive us into thinking there is some inherent “rightness” in the replication of our genes. If so, however, this is a con job. Our genes create brain structures that give us emotions and tendencies that in turn tell us that certain things are more right than others. But is this so? Can we truly have an “objective” sense of rightness and wrongness related to reproduction that is independent of the whisperings of our genes?
We can also frame moral and health questions in different ways to show that their relevance and their answers are specific to context, time, and culture. For example, in modern society, one might pose this moral and health question: Is it right and healthy to add more humans to a planet already suffering from overpopulation? I imagine that this question would not have been posed, say, one hundred years ago, or, if it were, it probably would have prompted a different answer. In short, is there any ultimate truth, significance, or rightness to the replication of human DNA?
To summarize, an evolutionary perspective does not necessarily imply that asexuality is a disorder. But would asexuality be considered “pathological” from any other perspectives? Let’s consider a number of these other perspectives (Bogaert, 2006b).
First, should asexual people be considered disordered and/or abnormal because they constitute a small minority and thus are statistically rare in the population? After all, to be abnormal is to deviate from the norm. If you think about it, I expect you will see that this is a poor criterion for pathology, because being a statistical rarity can be easily construed as positive and life enhancing in certain domains (e.g., exceptional musical talent, as mentioned earlier).
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My language here (e.g., gay genes