The Penguin Break Up
Silo and Roy, two male chinstrap penguins, coupled for six years and raised a baby penguin together at the Central Park Zoo. They broke up last spring. Silo left Roy for a female penguin named Scrappy. I know, this is a very sad story. What’s more sad, and pretty funny at the same time, is that people are pointing to this penguin story as proof that gays can change.
At the Web site for Focus on the Family, an influential organization run by radio host James C. Dobson, who has called homosexuality a disorder and advocates converting gays, a commentator, Warren Throckmorten, wrote: “For those who have pointed to Roy and Silo as models for us all, these developments must be disappointing. Some gay activists might actually be angry.”
I was able to speak with Silo and got this comment from him: “I identify as a queer penguin lover with a strong attraction towards male penguins and a weakness for female penguins with sexy and suggestive waddles.” There you have it, folks.
I am distressed and amused all at once.
Also after watching “The March of the Penguins” I started to think of myself as a penguin. Don’t ask…
And I thank you for obtaining that quote from Silo…
[…] Unlike Silo, the Central Park penguin who left his male partner last year for for a female penguin named Scrappy, six male penguins at a zoo in Germany continue to refuse to mate with the “stand-offish” females who were sent to seduce them. […]
[…] “And Tango Makes Three,” a children’s book about two male penguins raising a baby penguin based on the story of Central Park’s Roy and Silo, was moved from the children’s section to the nonfiction section of two Missouri public libraries because of the book’s “homosexual undertones.” The book, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, was moved from the children’s section at two Rolling Hills’ Consolidated Library’s branches in Savannah and St. Joseph in northwest Missouri. […]
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