When I set the "Front Page Displays" to be static and the same for both front page and posts, I experience a fatal PHP error when going to my Wordpress homepage. The error is on like 1619 in wp-includes/query.php:
$this->queried_object = & get_page(get_option('page_for_posts'));
It appears this is due to the nested function call on that line, although I'm not yet sure specifically why this error only occurs when both the front page and posts values are set the same. If the code above is replaced with the following code it appears to resolve the error:
$temp = get_option('page_for_posts');
$temp2 = get_page($temp);
$this->queried_object = & $temp2;
The reference operator actually appears to be useless because if removed from my fixed code block everything seems to function well also.