Clone Gay Sheep?

Contrarian evolutionary and economics blogger Steve Sailer has a lot in his archives on a biological-- but not necessarily genetic-- component or cause for male homosexuality. (He convincingly argues that biologically- anthropologically "Lesbians aren't gay"-- I can hardly wait to argue this one with my friends Kath and Athena when they come back from Greece). His new piece on twins with one straight and one gay member-- apparently from birth-- is fascinating, and also contains an irresistible sentence: "Gregory Cochran suggests that the best way to test the popular gay gene theory is to clone gay sheep".

Actually he is not kidding: "Although you hear a lot from propagandists about how common homosexuality is among animals, exclusive male homosexuality is quite rare. Rams are one of very few animals where a measurable percentage of males will ignore a female in heat who has been tied to a fence. It drives sheep ranchers crazy. They might have a superb specimen of a ram, a real Greg Louganis of the sheep world, that they want to mate with as many ewes as possible, but he doesn't have eyes for ewe -- just rams.

"Anyway, we've known how to clone sheep since Dolly back in the 1990s, so we could clone a bunch of gay rams and see how their clones turned out. If they are all gay, that suggests that there is a gay gene or genes. If not, that suggests the environment or random breakdowns play a role, such as Greg's [ Cochran's] gay germ theory or something else".