The Evolutionary Importance of Gay

Here's an idea to play with your head...

"Same-sex sexual behaviors are flexibly deployed in a variety of circumstances, for example as alternative reproductive tactics, as cooperative breeding strategies, as facilitators of social bonding or as mediators of intrasexual conflict. Once this flexibility is established, it becomes in and of itself a selective force that can drive selection on other aspects of physiology, life history, social behaviour and even morphology," said Bailey.

Supported, stable rearing.  Supportive, got-your-back hunting.  The traditional separation of genders in culturally specific groups, yet the continuous sexual drives.  Heck, there's even supposition of a "gay gene" - which would suggest that "gay" has an evolutionary advantage (which is why it's a gene that gets carried on).

Could being gay play an important, evolutionary role?  One more reason for religious fundamentalists to oppose same-sex marriages, teaching evolution, and penguins, I suppose...