Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, authors of the children’s picture book And Tango Makes Three (Simon & Schuster, 2005) are suing Florida’s Lake County school district and Florida’s Board of Education because of their efforts to have the book banned. The suit demands that Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law that prohibits instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation in public schools, be overturned as unconstitutional. The book is based on the true story. Roy and Silo, male chinstrap penguins at the New York City Central Park Zoo, began performing mating rituals in 1998. Zookeepers gave the couple a fertilized egg to incubate. The egg hatched and the baby female chick that emerged was named Tango. And Tango Makes Three has won multiple awards.
And Tango Makes Three is a children’s book about a different kind of family, something children are supposed to learn about in the early school grades. It is not about gay penguin sex and does not try to recruit young children to cross species barriers and become penguins.
The Florida “Don’t Say Gay” law originally applied only to students in kindergarten through third grade, but its restrictions have been extended through eighth grade. Petitioners defending the book include six students in Lake County public schools. One, who will be entering first grade in the fall, told the court he wants to read the book because of his fascination with animals.
Roy and Silo are only the most prominent same-sex penguin couple. There are also male Magellenic penguins Harry and Pepper at the San Francisco Zoo, male Gentoo penguins Spehn and Magic at SEA LIFE Aquarium in Sydney, Australia, male Humbolt penguins Skipper and Ping at Zoo Berlin, and female Gentoo penguins Electra and Viola at the L’Oceanogràfic in Valencia, Spain. Researchers note that regardless of sex, penguins share responsibility for naturing and raising their chick. Since penguins often lay more than one egg at a time and only one usually survives, same-sex penguin couples can adopt an extra egg.
Same-sex behavior ranging from sex activity to co-parenting has been observed in over 1,000 animal species including dolphins, cats, both large and small, beetles, spiders, flies, fish, flamingos, geese, bison, deer, gibbons, chimpanzees, bats, monkeys, elephants, and humans. There are many theories about why same-sex coupling is so widespread in nature, but the key finding is that it is a natural phenomenon.
PEN America and book publisher Penguin Random House are also suing the Escambia County, Florida school district because it has removed books written by nonwhite and L.G.B.T.Q. authors and that discuss race, racism, gender, and sexuality.
Happy Gay Pride Month.