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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
Ok, I might be confused because I'm not scientifically minded. But how does sex between same sex benefit and evolutionary advantage since there's no continuation of the species involved, which means in a pure homosexual society for example it wouldn't exist long enough to evolve in the purest sense?
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I didn't say homosexuality itself conferred an advantage, I said it must be associated with something that confers an advantage. Changes in traits aren't always 100% beneficial or 100% detrimental, things are complicated and have multiple effects and those change depending on the environment that's doing the selecting.
So if there's some trait that confers a strong advantage and is selected for and there's something about it that confers a disadvantage (homosexuality being a disadvantage from the viewpoint of reproduction), if the disadvantage is weak and the advantage strong, it's possible they'll both be selected for.
There might also be some advantage to the population as a whole, so while an individual's genes don't get passed on, the gene pool still selects for a certain percentage of individuals with that trait. Remember it's populations that evolve, not individuals.
Fitness isn't just about reproduction, it's also about surviving to get to reproduction, and as a social species surviving to get to reproduction depends on more than just the individual, so you have to gauge fitness from that point of view.
I don't know if homosexuality specifically fits into either of those as I really haven't read much on it, but I do recall people talking about it from an evolutionary point of view and there being advantages.
That it exists in many animals (including humans) and hasn't been selected out strongly suggests there's an advantage to fitness in some fashion.