The Center for Disease control in Atlanta, Georgia, recently noticed something interesting in their statistics. Apparently the number of men identifying as gay was increasing.

There are many who argue that this is simply because America’s increasingly tolerant outlook gave more gay men confidence to admit to who they really were. Others, however, have argued that the percentage of homosexuals really is increasing over time, directly in tune with the reported figures.

Some have gone a step further, claiming there’s a direct correlation between the number of gay people and the increasingly dire state the world is in.

“Today overcrowding, urban sprawl, pollution, and increased yet inadequate farmland are negatively affecting both wildlife and the humans who cause it at an alarming rate,” wrote G. Roger Denson in an article for the Huffington Post.

“Given what we know about natural selection as an eminently versatile response to environmental endangerment, and what we know about the genome’s metabolic adaptability, it follows that humans over generations would develop a mechanism within them to check and balance procreative extravagance.”

If it’s true, it couldn’t be happening at a better time. The World Health Organization recently announced that over a billion people — one in six of us — are facing starvation. Food prices continue to skyrocket, as more and more hungry mouths demand their share of a dwindling agricultural resource.

If you’re a believer in climate change, however, you’ll probably be of the opinion that mankind will suffocate or drown long before starvation becomes an issue. More people means more demand for energy and the world is heating up in parallel to the increased amount of greenhouse gases we churn into the atmosphere. The Sahara desert is spreading like a canker, while melting ice caps threaten to engulf increasingly populous coastlines beneath the waves.

The world is, quite frankly, a mess, and “breeders” are the number one cause of the problem. The world’s population increases by 74 million a year, with scientists estimating almost 8 billion people crammed onto our tiny planet by 2022. We face the real possibility that within our own lifetimes, we’ll reach a stage where the number of people on this planet could become unsustainable.

Homosexuality, it’s argued, is one of nature’s solutions to that.

It makes a lot of sense. We’re living on the knife-edge of a new era, in which science and medicine might one day keep people alive for decades, centuries or perhaps even indefinitely. That removes the human necessity of reproduction, which is arguably the only biological difference between straight and gay relationships.

In all other respects, gay people and straight people are the same. The look the same, have the same hopes, dreams, and ambitions. They share the same strengths and weaknesses, including the desire to build emotional and sexual bonds with other human beings (just ones of the same sex).

The only difference is that straight people make babies naturally, whereas gay couples require the intervention of science or adoption (and, in all honesty, a lot more straight people should consider adopting a parentless child rather than add one of their own to the increasingly overcrowded world).

And despite what conservative Christians try to tell you, such a scenario isn’t science fiction. Homosexuality isn’t just entirely normal in nature — it’s rampant. Over 1,500 animal species have shown demonstrations of homosexuality or bisexuality. Studies of rats demonstrated that this behavior tended to increase when kept in overpopulated conditions, even when the ratio of males-to-females remained static.

Some argue that comparing a study of rats to humans is inaccurate or even insulting (despite the fact that 90 percent of pharmaceutical products are approved through this method). Others argue that — hey, there might be something there.

Such a theory only comes up against one major stumbling block: If evolution is “survival of the fittest,” how can homosexuality be an inherited trait? It’s demonstrated by a group which breeds biologically far less frequently than straight people, so surely it’s less likely to be ‘passed down’ from generation to generation.

Well, scientists have an answer to that one — FucM.

No, not “fuck ‘em,” but fucose mutarotase — a single gene that can be removed from female mice grown in a lab which “turns them gay.” It’s not the long sought “gay gene,” but it is a genetic marker that, once removed, makes female mice far more likely to gravitate towards sexual relationships with other female mice. Scientists at the University of Utah have done the same thing with worms.

Man, like any other animal in nature, reacts to his environment. Therefore, it’s an entirely valid theory that exposure to overcrowding has triggered some similar genetic marker encouraging a larger and larger swath of the population to expand their dating horizons beyond just the opposite sex.

It’s a solid, scientifically-derived theory which indicates that homosexuality is not a “lifestyle choice,” but an entirely natural, logical genetic feature as uncontrollable as height, weight, skin color or any of a hundred other traits that could be influenced by environmental factors. Increasingly, it’s also looking like the smart genetic choice.

Because the alternative is pretty bleak.

In the standard scenario, mankind is likely to simply breed itself to slow, ugly, miserable extinction on an increasingly barren Earth. Students of history, however, thrill at imagining nature taking alternative recourse.

Some suggest that the Black Plague and the Great Plague were natural responses to overpopulation in the past. With mankind’s scientific shortsightedness having already led to the creation of antibiotic resistant bacteria (not to mention lethal super-viruses, and pesticide resistant bugs) how long is it before one of those cruelly culls our population back down to more manageable proportions?

I don’t claim to know, but I do realize that when conservative Christians warn us of the “dangers” of homosexuality, they’re barking up the wrong tree. Gay people aren’t going to destroy society. In fact, they might be the only hope it has left!