Via PZ Myers, this summary of the evolutionary reasons for homosexuality. It occurs to me there are major flaws in any such theories taken from a strictly biological/evolutionary standpoint. The first is the assumption that those with same-sex orientations don't breed. There's no support for this at all.
Keep in mind that "homosexuality" as a personality type was not even a concept until the late nineteenth century. While there have always been Kinsey 6s, even those with a wholly or largely same-sex orientation are certainly not precluded from leaving offspring. We're gay, not sterile. If you go back through history, even in societies that found a place for same-sex relationships, marriage and children were a given. (Take ancient Greece as the type specimen here -- male/male love was celebrated, but men were expected to get married and raise sons.)
Edward O. Wilson made a strong argument for kin selection through his discussions on the economy of inheritance. It's the same mechanism that has made social insects a viable (not to say extremely successful) life form. I don't see any support for the idea that it should be different with human beings. (There's also the fact that in really traditional human societies, child-rearing is a communal affair. Everybody gets to play.)
There's also the fact that all of these hypotheses are pretty much reductivist, which means that in examing questions as complex and multivalent as human sexuality, they are gonig to come up lacking.
My own bottom line: We're here, baby. Deal with it.
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