The Saga of the Toronto Gay Penguins

In a bizarre move, a zoo is splitting up a male pair, to force them to breed. 

Queer Politics for the Birds: The Saga of the Gay Penguins

Toronto’s zoo is splitting up a pair of same-gender penguins. These Happy Feet males, Pedro and Buddy -- jokingly referred to as "Brokeback Iceberg" -- have been nesting with each other for a year.

The reason for the boys’ split-up, a zoo official says, is because African penguins are an endangered species.

The pair has what’s known as a "social bond," but it’s not necessarily a "sexual bond," Tom Mason, the zoo’s curator of birds and invertebrates told the Associated Press.

"Penguins are so social they need that...company. And the group they came from was a bachelor group waiting for a chance to be paired up with females," Mason stated. "They had paired up there, they came to us already paired, and it’s our job to be matchmakers to get them to go with some females." 

SheWired 

The argument they have used to justify this, is the old one that they aren't "really" queer, just doing it in the absence of females. This is nothing more than homophobia directed at the animal world, used to avoid facing the fact that sexual activities between members of the same biological sex are commonplace in nature - for some species, and for some individual animals, more common than the heterosexual kind.

Bruce Bagemihl, in Biological Exuberance, has described this avoidance strategy, and several others, in his book "Biological Exuberance" - together with accounts of the extensive scientific evidence now emerging to rebut them.

As scientists, the curators at Toronto zoo really should know better. 

Books:

• Bagemihl, Bruce: Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity
• Roughgarden, Joan: Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People
• Sommer, Volker and Vasey, Paul: Homosexual Behaviour in Animals: An Evolutionary Perspective
• Poani, Aldo:Animal Homosexuality: A Biosocial Perspective

Related articles

• "Unnatural" Nature, Immoral Butterflies: The Great Cover-Up of Animal Homosexuality
• Breaking up is hard to do - even for vultures
• Aquinas, and "Nature" 
• Is Exclusive Heterosexuality Unnatural?
• Our Queer Primate Cousins
• Animals Use Sex Toys, Too
• Same Sex Parents, Furred and Feathered
• Natural Law, Laysan’s Albatross, and the Question of Evidence
• Queer Bonobos: Sex As Conflict Resolution
• Bighorn Rams: Macho Homos, Wimpish Heteros

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• Canada's same-sex penguin pair to be split apart (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Is it homophobic to split up gay penguins? (guardian.co.uk)
• The Gay Side of Nature (time.com)
• Divorcing Tradition: Freedom, Equality and Marriage (3quarksdaily.com)
• 15 Bizarre Animal Mating Rituals (popcrunch.com)
• Sexual Fluidity Is Natural in Animals (gayrights.change.org)