Homosexuality a disease....caused by a virus?

So speculates a prominent scientist and professor at the University of Utah, Gregory Cochran.  I love contrarians....and this guy's a pretty smart one.

Forget the "gay gene" - it doesn't exist.  Start looking for the "gay virus!"  Then we can start working on some sort of chemical treatment like they're doing with Narcolepsy, which Cochran sees as the best analog for homosexuality.  It has been discovered that narcolepsy is caused by the lack of a neurochemical called hypocretin, but it is still not known how the loss is caused.  An autoimmune system attack (possibly by a virus) is a possible suspect.

"How could a serious disease be common, if evolution is always optimizing everything?   Well, if it hit you at age 85, selection wouldn't be very good at filtering it away.   People have already had their children by then ...  So this optimizing process works less well at advanced ages.   Which is the basic explanation for aging.

But how could a serious disease be common in early life?   And think of it as we do - how could a condition that reduces or eliminates reproduction be common in early life?

Most common and serious diseases that have been around a long time and hit in early life are caused by germs - bacteria, viruses, parasitic worms, etc. Evolution doesn't necessarily make them rare, because evolution is playing on both sides in this struggle: they're evolving too.    In much the same way, evolution doesn't just make zebras faster, it makes the lions faster too.   Lions can continue to be a major problem for zebras over millions of years - and in the same way, malaria can continue to be a problem for humans indefinitely....

So if a disease is common (> a tenth of one percent), hits in early life, has been around a long time (so we know it's not caused by some new industrial chemical or whatever), and it's not restricted to people from the malaria zone - it's probably caused by some bug. 

But what about homosexuality?   Well, from this biological perspective, it's surely a disease. Disinterest in the opposite sex reduces reproduction quite a bit - around 80% in American conditions. Does it hit in early life?    Sure. Has it been around a long time?    Certainly.   Do you find it in non-African populations, people who never lived with malaria?   Yes.

So it's a bug....."