Harry and Pepper
Last
fall, Buddy and Pedro, a same-sex couple of endangered African
penguins, were separated by the Toronto Zoo in hopes they would breed.
Today, their life after gay love is On Our Radar.
When my first grandchild was a toddler, we wore out a copy of
And Tango Makes Three, the
true story of Silo and Roy, two male Chinstrap penguins at New York
City’s Central Park Zoo. They cuddle together, and share a cozy nest,
and when all the other penguin couples begin to produce eggs, Silo and
Roy
want to be parents too. Unaware of the laws of procreation, they bring
an egg-shaped rock back to their nest, where they try faithfully to
hatch it. A kindly zookeeper notices the plight of Silo and Roy and
decides they deserve a chance to be daddies, so he entrusts them with a
real egg. The book recalls the same-sex penguin couple’s devotion
tending, first to their precious egg, and later, to their little
hatchling daughter, Tango. As I remember it, the last words in the book
are “Read it again Nana!”
Everybody outside the hard-core homophobes of this world, seems to
love a “gay” penguin story. If human gay couples were half as popular,
the House of Representatives would be picketing the Supreme Court to
overturn DOMA. Why, even in China, a country not known for its embrace
of gay rights, a pair of same-sex penguins at
Harbin Polar Land was given a “wedding.” Then, when a female in the
park had trouble keeping up with her twin hatchlings, keepers gave the
pair one of her chicks to make them a family.
Buddy and Pedro
“Gay” penguins have always been a huge draw. In the early 1990s, the
SanFrancisco Zoo was
fortunate to have a pair of “gay” Magellanic penguins from South
America. Harry and Pepper drew adoring crowds for six years. The pair
would help incubate the eggs of other penguins, and eventually hatched
and raised their own chick, just like Silo and Roy. Their keepers said
they were the best parents on the island, raising the biggest chick,
who, by the way, showed no sign of maladjustment due to having two dads.
The affection for “gay” penguin couples revealed itself again last fall in a public outcry, when the
Toronto Zoo announced they were splitting up their own same-sex penguin couple,
Buddy and Pedro.
Unlike the other penguins who were allowed to raise chicks, Buddy and
Pedro are African Penguins, considered endangered, and the two had been
born and bred in captivity to have the “right stuff,” genetically
speaking, to strengthen their species. But in response to the public
protest, the Zoo promised Pedro and Buddy would be reunited in the
spring.
For the good of the species, Buddy and Pedro were each forced into what, in human terms, would be an
arranged marriage. Buddy
had been a successful breeder in the past, producing several chicks
before his partner of ten years died and Pedro came into his life. He
was introduced to a female named Farai. The two produced two chicks,
which sadly didn’t survive. Pedro is said to have courted his handpicked
bride, the standoffish Thandiwe, but the two did not produce an egg.
Finally the breeding season was over, and the gentlemen were
reintroduced into the zoo’s penguin exhibit.
Are you cheering for the lovebirds to find each other once again? Of
course you are. That’s because people love “gay” penguins. (“Read it
again Nana!”) But in reality, there’s no such thing as a gay penguin, at
least not in the same committed way humans are gay.
Though Buddy and Pedro are back in the same Toronto Zoo penguin
exhibit, they have given up their man love and have bonded with the
females chosen for them. But before you feel too angry at the zoo for
splitting them up in the first place, you should know Silo left Roy for a
cute female newcomer and Pepper was lured away from Harry by a
conniving widow named Linda before her former partner’s body was even
cold, or warm, however that works for penguins
Scientists who study them say penguins aren’t gay
the same way people are gay. It
is the nature of the species to form “bonded pairs” and occasionally
two males or even less frequently, two females will form such a pair. We
anthropomorphize the cute little guys – attribute human characteristics
to them – but they aren’t people, and how penguins instinctively behave really
has nothing to do with human beings. Buddy and Pedro pair bonding
doesn’t prove homosexuality is innate in all species, though it may be,
nor does the fact they are now happy with female partners prove
reparative therapy works. It doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t
something that we humans can learn from penguins.
The penguin community wasn’t scandalized because Buddy and Roy wanted
to nest together. As long as they didn’t steal their eggs, the other
penguins didn’t object to having Harry and Pepper in the neighborhood.
No penguin felt compelled to protest to the zookeepers with a hunger
strike. Not a single penguin bullied them, or ostracized them. Two boy
penguins were experiencing penguin attraction, and not a feather was
ruffled, imagine that! It is only humans who seem to feel the need to
label them as “gay” and treat them as an oddity. To other penguins, they
are just two birds in love, and isn’t that the way things should be?
Today, penguin love, and the prospect of all love being considered
ordinary love – (which would make it pretty darn extraordinary) - are On
Our Radar.
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