Interesting, but what if someone only had one gay child? Is it possible you'd only have gay children if evolution was certain you'd have more?
I'm not sure I understand, why does someone having just one gay child preclude the effect? Evolution isn't certain of anything. It's not like a conscious entity that decides what happens, it's just the combined effect of natural selection and random genetic anomalies on a population. It's certainly possible you'd only have gay children, but the more children you have, the greater the chance that that "streak", as it were, disappears.
Are you sure about that? Minsky said Is there really anything concrete that distinguishes intelligence from evolution, other than speed? Evolution certainly acts like a languid form of intelligence. Perhaps even consciousness? </meta-tangent>Evolution isn't certain of anything. It's not like a conscious entity that decides what happens
Speed is what distinguishes intelligence
No bird discovers how to fly: evolution used a trillion bird-years to 'discover' that–where merely hundreds of person-years sufficed
I think the distinguishing factor there is that evolution works exclusively through random chance and essentially trial-and-error, whereas intelligence generally involves the use of reason to determine what will probably be effective. But you're right, there's certainly a comparison to be made, and one could argue that intelligence just works through theoretical trial and error, making it sort of a small-scale evolution.
Sorry, I wasn't very clear. What I mean is, if a father with the gene had one gay child, and then fell out a tree and died, the gay child wouldn't reproduce and the gene would die. So that gene would be more succesful if all the other genes insured pre-mature deaths didn't happen, perhaps suggesting it originated from well-off tribes.
Gayness is a cultural phenomenon, and quite a young one. It's impact on the spread of genes probably has had zero effect on the gene pool. Until recently, homosexual sex didn't preclude one from having a family. Nobody identified as "gay" until very recently in evolutionary terms, even though males have been having sex with males since long before the dawn of man. For a measurable effect on inheritance, we'll have to wait a lot longer than a handful of generations.