I would not say it confounds the issue. Just because someone is homosexual it doesn't mean they don't look for similar attributes in their parters. Would it be

I would not say it confounds the issue. Just because someone is homosexual it doesn't mean they don't look for similar attributes in their parters. Would it be surprising if women that dates other women generally look for high status, while men that dates other men look for genetics (ie appearance)? There is also a few but correlating findings where if one sibling is homosexual then the others siblings have more children compared to the national average, but researchers don't really know why except that it is statistically significant. You are right the human factor is relevant and people can go against their "basic" interests, but statistics from census data and dating sites shows quite grim numbers. Wealth (as a proxy for social status and power) is the single biggest dominating factor for men with a very sharp drop at the bottom, and appearance (as a proxy for genetics) is the single biggest dominating factor for women. It also correlated to the size of peoples social support network, stress levels, overall health, and life expectancy. Just looking at life expectancy, wealth for men has a correlation of about 10-15 years difference. Exercise in comparison seems to only have a correlation of around 7 years difference.