A Biochemically Better Gay

I had this crazy thought while sitting in Biochemistry class.

The teacher was doing an excellent job confusing me regarding Gibbs Free Energy and biological processes when I realized something. All processes that do not have input tend towards equilibrium. Let's take the example of a perfume bottle being opened in a room. All of the perfume is in the bottle, while none of it is in the room... and because of this difference, called a gradient, the perfume begins to spread.

Ok, well this isn't a new scientific concept; let's add another concept to it:

It takes more energy to make similar pairings than different pairings, as systems tend towards heterogeneity. This is related in part to the above concept, but it can best be shown with magnets or Adenosine Tri-Phosphate, called ATP.

ATP is a molecule that our bodies create to drive biological reactions. There are little magnetic phosphate groups that our body will force together, even though they have the natural inclination to fly apart. Imagine you placing two north ends of a magnets together. They fly away from eachother once you stop holding them together. If you want them to touch, it requires extra energy in the form of you physically pushing them next to one another.

A generously borrowed graph of ATP function

Our bodies stores energy by pushing these ATP 'magnets' together, then using the stored energy to make our bodies work. Life will go through great lengths to create these similar-magnet pairings... but only because they are very important.

Let's pull this to traits and populations. Given ideal settings, traits in a population will favor heterogenous, or non-similar, pairing as a function of statistics. It takes great energy or selective pressure to change this equilibrium.

Alright, throw in one more concept, and you'll see where I'm going.

Homosexual pairing, given ideal settings, is a trait that has 100% fatality. This trait ensures that our pairings will not produce offspring.

Without cause, a trait with this type of fatality tends towards equilibrium. Without cause, homosexuality wouldn't exist. It's just not physically possible to keep us around otherwise. Why spend all this energy to make similar pairings when the state with greatest free energy is heterogeneity?

Well, that's an interesting question. Why do homosexuals exist? Biology must have some damn good reason for creating us, since we require so much just to have around! It can't be unique to human interaction, since homosexuality is common in a huge number of animals. It has to be some basic function to the survival of the species.

Well, don't I feel special today?