To be immune to selection because it’s part of intelligence would imply a strong genetic correlation. Aside from the fact that I am doubtful any such genetic correlation will ever be found (there is no noted phenotypic correlation of homosexuality & intelligence that I’ve heard of), this still has the issue that homosexuality ought to be decreasing noticeably over time: while intelligence has apparently been neutral or selected for over the past few millennia and so hypothetically could’ve slowed the selection against homosexuality, intelligence itself has been selected against for at least a century, so that would accelerate the selection now that there are fitness penalties for both homosexuality & intelligence (by a fair bit, because selection on continuous traits is much faster than selection on rare binary traits).
there is no noted phenotypic correlation of homosexuality & intelligence that I’ve heard of
I’ve heard the raw correlation widely claimed, but I think most people interpret it as measuring closeting. Certainly openly gay men have higher income than straight men.
I’d be inclined to suspect closeting too. The better your ability to support yourself, the less you need to worry about repercussions.
Tangential and possibly relevant: I’ve noticed bisexual women appear to be ridiculously common in high-intelligence nerd communities. I don’t know whether I should associate that with the intelligence or the geek/nerd/dork personality cluster, nor do I know which way the causation goes.
To be immune to selection because it’s part of intelligence would imply a strong genetic correlation. Aside from the fact that I am doubtful any such genetic correlation will ever be found (there is no noted phenotypic correlation of homosexuality & intelligence that I’ve heard of), this still has the issue that homosexuality ought to be decreasing noticeably over time: while intelligence has apparently been neutral or selected for over the past few millennia and so hypothetically could’ve slowed the selection against homosexuality, intelligence itself has been selected against for at least a century, so that would accelerate the selection now that there are fitness penalties for both homosexuality & intelligence (by a fair bit, because selection on continuous traits is much faster than selection on rare binary traits).
I’ve heard the raw correlation widely claimed, but I think most people interpret it as measuring closeting. Certainly openly gay men have higher income than straight men.
I’d be inclined to suspect closeting too. The better your ability to support yourself, the less you need to worry about repercussions.
Tangential and possibly relevant: I’ve noticed bisexual women appear to be ridiculously common in high-intelligence nerd communities. I don’t know whether I should associate that with the intelligence or the geek/nerd/dork personality cluster, nor do I know which way the causation goes.