It was in these classes that I was told that a minority of the human population being gay was potentially adaptive for ancestral tribes because these individuals could help support the overall community without spending energy on their own children. It was argued that they were a nonreproductive helping hand, if you will. In the same class we also discussed the potential usefulness of other nonreproductive community members, like women who have passed menopause or people who could never bear children. Such benefits are called indirect fitness benefits—they help the survival of their genetic
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