What Natalists Should Learn from LGBT

Or, "Fertility Pride! Learning from the Shocking LGBT Success Story"

I’m still stunned by the massive rise of the LGBT share of the population. Less than 80% of young Americans now identify as straight. In the late-80s, the slogan that “10% of people are gay” was an absurdly overstated advocacy statistic. Now it understates Gen Z’s non-straight share by more than a factor of two.

Why am I so stunned? Because ever since reading Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, I’ve believed in the deep explanatory power of evolutionary psychology. On the surface, human mating customs vary widely over time and space. But on closer look, almost all of these varied mating customs are plausible ways for humans to propagate their genes — or, in Dawkinsian terms, for selfish genes to propagate themselves. As long as the LGBT share was a rounding error of 1-2%, it was easy to minimize this anomaly as a curious genetic mutation. No longer!

The lazy way to resolve my cognitive dissonance is to highlight the stark contrast between self-reported LGBT identity and actual sexual behavior. A large share of bisexuals, especially female bisexuals, have no actual same-sex sexual experiences. Pace Scott Alexander, but the simplest story is that they’re just LARPing.

But on closer look, at least one glaring behavioral difference between straights and non-straights remains: Straights have far more kids! And from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology, this fertility chasm isn’t just relevant. It’s maximally relevant.

A world where all self-reported LGBTs had partners of both genders but ended up having average fertility would be weird from an evolutionary point of view, but not that weird. A world where most self-reported LGBTs had no same-sex partners but ended up with fertility far below average, in contrast, would be very weird.

We’re much closer to the latter scenario than the former.

So what on Earth is going on? It’s tempting to patch the model with a single epicycle. Since our data on low LGBT fertility is recent, you could just declare, “In earlier times, there was such strong familial pressure to marry and have kids that LGBT fertility probably used to be about average. In the absence of negative selection pressure, the true LGBT share of the population covertly rose for centuries. Then, over the course of just two generations, familial pressure evaporated. LGBTs didn’t just come out of the closet; they started having the low fertility consistent with their uncloseted preferences. Which means, ironically, that LGBT genes are now suddenly starting to disappear at the rate that one would naively expect. Yes, it’s a big anomaly; but in evolutionary time, this anomaly will be short-lived.”

I saw many of these last summer in Vienna.

Pretty compelling, as far as epicycles go. But the focus on family pressure alone seems too narrow. The bigger picture, at least in most Western countries, is that social pressure on LGBT flipped from casually opposed to publicly celebratory. Last summer, I happened to be in Austria during LGBT Pride Month. All of Vienna was bedecked in rainbows and augmented rainbows. Pride flags were visible from every direction. The crosswalks were repainted with rainbow colors. I know that Austria is not a totalitarian LGBT state, but it totally looked like one.

So what? In the early 90s, I would have walked through a maximalist LGBT celebration and thought, “This won’t change a damn thing.” The idea that you could actually alter people’s sexual orientation with flags and crosswalks would have struck me as absurd. Now, however, I see that my early confidence was misplaced. While heterosexuality has deep evolutionary roots, so does the human desire to conform. It isn’t just that parents have stopped pressuring their LGBT children to give them grandchildren despite their true attractions. It’s that society generally has switched from despising LGBT feelings to celebrating them. The cumulative result is that many young people’s true attractions have changed.

No, I’m not claiming that LGBT positivity can turn anyone LGBT. But in light of what’s happened, I am now convinced that LGBT positivity can turn a notable share of the population LGBT, especially if they experience the positivity in their formative years.

I’ve already argued that LGBT peers make you more likely to become LGBT:

Some people won’t become gay, no matter how many gays they know, just as some people won’t become Mormon, no matter how many Mormons they know. None of that changes the obvious fact that hanging out with Group X causally raises the chance that you become an X. And one strong predictor of hanging out with Group X is outreach by Group X.

The same principle holds for LGBT positivity generally, especially when the dose gets high enough. One isolated LGBT Pride parade probably won’t make any converts, but an enthusiastic culture of LGBT Pride will.

At least a few readers have interpreted my past pieces on this topic as homophobic bigotry. But, I protest, they totally misunderstand me. While many who fret about “social contagion” have a thinly-veiled political agenda, my primary motivation is scientific curiosity. I want to figure out how the observed rapid rise in LGBT identity happened. Anyone who is familiar with both evolutionary psychology and recent data should be following the same breadcrumb trail.

That said, once you entertain the idea that enthusiastic social approval of anything has a strong effect on human identity and behavior, it definitely makes sense to ask, “What most deserves our enthusiastic social approval?” As an economist, the obvious response is, “behavior with large positive externalities.” If you think we’re already overpopulated, celebrating LGBT identity makes perfect sense: Due to their low fertility, LGBTs help push humanity back from the brink.

In reality, however, there is strong evidence that the world is underpopulated. In most rich countries, the underpopulation problem will be severe in a decade or two. If you’re mean-spirited, you could take this as a utilitarian argument for public homophobia. The constructive approach, however, is to learn from — and emulate — the LGBT movement’s shocking success. If enthusiastic, durable public celebration changes sexual identity and behavior, why not start publicly celebrating straightness, the most fertile of all sexual identities?

Or better yet… start celebrating fertility itself.

The pagan fertility rite from Solomon and Sheba

Natalists often push various kinds of baby bonuses. Contrary to what you’ve heard, such incentives work well relative to the counterfactual. But what the LGBT explosion teaches us is that high doses of sheer enthusiastic social approval are strong enough to move mountains. Yes, money matters. But a full-blown fertility cult culture — complete with Parent Pride Parades — plausibly could work as well or better.

Historically, as you may have heard, fertility cults were a big deal. While the Abrahamic religions probably do raise fertility relative to atheism and agnosticism, they definitely send mixed messages. Growing up Catholic, the anti-sex propaganda I endured exceeded pro-natal propaganda by at least a factor of 10. The big lesson of the LGBT explosion is that natalists should joyfully embrace Fertility Pride.

Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day are a fine start, but why not make the full five week span between them a fervent festival of fertility? Bizarrely, there’s already a flag for Infertility Awareness, but no flag for fertility itself!

I dream of a world when millions of Fertility flags go up on Mothers’ Day, and proudly wave in the breeze through Fathers’ Day. When we paint the crosswalks pink and baby blue. When sex ed focuses on the need to start having kids early — and reality t.v. pivots from the pain of women in their teens struggling to raise a baby to the pain of women in the their 30s struggling to get pregnant.

LGBT Pride is an amazing success story. Natalists should take its amazing success to heart. Since today is Fathers’ Day, you can start by enthusiastically telling all the current fathers you see, “Thank you for your service” — and all the potential future fathers, “There is no higher calling.” And if you want to do more, how about you make us a flag?

We have an Infertility flag, but no Fertility flag!