Three short days after the religious right had their asses handed to them over marriage equality, troubling signs that the end was near and God's wrath is nearly upon us emerged.
Or not. Buzz Feed reports the happy news that two male penguins in a Denmark zoo have become dads.
After nearly a year together at the Odense Zoo in Denmark, the same-sex couple attempted to become parents of their own. Keepers witnessed the pair trying to steal other couple's eggs. And during brooding season came, the penguins even tried to incubate a dead herring.
The Odense Zoo reports that the penguins were recipients of an unexpected blessing when a female penguin laid not one but two eggs. She ultimately ditched the second egg, which afforded the male couple to become adoptive parents.
However, before they were given the egg - the males had to practice on artificial eggs. Once proven capable, they received and successfully incubated the egg. The chick was born a month ago but the sex won't be determined for another eight months.
Of course homosexuality in the animal kingdom is not rare. It has been observed in close to 1,500 species. Penguins have long been known to have same-sex attractions to one another.
Penguins have been observed to engage in homosexual behaviour since at least as early as 1911. George Murray Levick, who documented this behaviour in Adélie Penguins at Cape Adare, described it as "depraved". The report was considered too shocking for public release at the time, and was suppressed. The only copies that were made available privately to researchers were translated into Greek, to prevent this knowledge becoming more widely known. The report was unearthed only a century later, and published in Polar Record in June 2012.
It is almost understandable that Levick would be a little disconcerted to discover these perverse penguins. This was 1911, after all. But as recently as 2005, prudes still had their hair on fire over gay penguins.
In 2005, the book children's book And Tango Makes Three was published, telling the true story of Roy and Silo, two male Chinstrap Penguins in New York's Central Park Zoo.
Roy and Silo were observed performing behaviors typically seen in penguin couples, such as bowing to one another. Roy and Silo made a nest together, and seemed to be trying to hatch a rock that resembled an egg. When zookeepers realized that these two males had formed a couple, they gave them an egg to hatch. This egg was obtained from a male-female penguin couple, named Betty and Porkey, who had two eggs and could not care for both at once. Roy and Silo took turns sitting on the egg, and eventually it hatched. The female chick was named "Tango" by the zookeepers.
Of course this being a children's book telling a sweet story about gay birdie love, the Christian right became completely unhinged.
Candi Cushman, education analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said the book is far from a “true story.” “It’s very misleading,” she said, “and it’s a very disingenuous, inaccurate way to promote a political agenda to little kids. The penguin’s heterosexual behavior was widely reported in national news.
All over the country they were screaming for the book to be banned and yanked from library shelves. When one of the penguins later mated with a female penguin, the shouted from the steeple tops about how homosexuality doesn't exist in the animal kingdom. They called themselves vindicated. I called the penguin bisexual. Whatever.
I'm posting this sweet story today to once again make the point that the only species in the animal kingdom that exhibits bigotry are human beings.
Congratulations to the happy dads. It's only natural to be happy for you.