I've just become aware that part of the culture war over homosexuality has been waged via penguin stories. Really.
There is a pair of male Chinstrap Penguins (apparently the capitalization is appropriate) at the Central Park Zoo in New York City who were seen trying to hatch a rock together as if it were an egg. Zoo officials gave the penguins, Roy and Silo, an egg from a heterosexual penguin couple to see what they did. They hatched it and raised the chick, a female named Tango.
A children's book ("And Tango Makes Three") was written about the story thus far, but more has happened since then. The author opined that it was a reasonable tool to help parents explain same-sex parents to their children. Backlash against the book from social conservatives resulted in it being the most challenged and banned book in the USA for several years. Apparently, conservatives prefer the heterosexual penguins from "The March of the Penguins."
The penguins, of course, lived on after the book was written. Tango grew up and stayed with another female penguin ("Tanuzi") for two mating seasons. Roy and Silo broke up after six mating seasons when Silo seemingly left Roy for a female penguin from San Diego's Sea World named Scrappy. There are 4 other homosexual couples among the zoo's 65 Chinstrap Penguins.
Liberal lessons from these events:
- Homosexuality is natural, since animals do it.
- Homosexuals can have stable, long-term relationships (6 years out of a 20-year lifespan).
- Homosexuals can raise infants to adulthood.
- Without social stigma, about 13% of the population is gay.
Conservative lessons from these events:
- Young raised by homosexuals turn out homosexual.
- Homosexuality requires irrationality: rocks aren't eggs.
- Homosexuals eventually turn straight or go celibate.
- The Beach Boys were right about California girls.
But the most important lesson of all is this crap is stupid. The behavior of penguins proves absolutely nothing about the ideal behavior of humans, and only tells us what we already know about actual human behavior, except badly generalized and subjectivized.
Fine, it's entertaining water-cooler conversation. But when it starts getting op/ed space in the New York Times and people start advocating for the book to be banned from public libraries then people are taking this gibberish way too seriously.
(On another note, speaking as a social conservative, don't ban the stupid book. Just don't read it. Yeah, it irritates me, too. But freedom of speech should win, even if the speech is irritating.)
