The Passion of the Penguin

The Christian far-right has discovered the joy of penguins.

As recently noted on the Huffington Post, Christians all over the country are rejoicing at the success of the documentary The March of the Penguins, which documents the long journey Emperor penguins must take to reproduce and thrive.

On the right-wing Web site WorldNetDaily.com, an opponent of abortion wrote that the movie “verified the beauty of life and the rightness of protecting it.” And at a conference for young Republicans, the editor of National Review urged participants to see the movie because it promoted monogamy.

In another Christian magazine, writer Andrew Coffin says, "That any one of these eggs survives is a remarkable feat - and, some might suppose, a strong case for intelligent design.”

And still other Christian commentators have dubbed the movie The Passion of the Penguin, in reference to The Passion of the Christ, another successful movie that found enormous support in the far-right Christian community.

Do you ever wonder what these ultra far-right people are thinking? Everyone else in the world, or at least, everyone else in the world that pertains to science and reality, has been reading all the new documentation about homosexuality and nature.

For instance, researchers at Oregon State University recently discovered that about eight percent of rams are gay. The scientists, at the university along with those at the Oregon Health & Science University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Sheep Experiment Station, say that the finding may prove sexuality in general, and homosexuality in particular, may be biologically driven.

Meanwhile, Boston Parks officials disclosed that Romeo and Juliet, the famous pair of white swans in the city’s Pubic Garden, are really two females. Gay lovers, these swans: Juliet and Juliet.

Actually, the book Biological Exuberance revealed that homosexual behavior had been documented in some 450 species; the book was cited by the American Psychiatric Association in a amicus curiae brief concerning the case in which the Supreme court overturned sodomy laws (for humans. Luckily for the swans and the rams, the Christians have yet to pass laws prohibiting them from falling in love).

But most relevant to the March of the Penguins is that there are more documented cases of gay penguins than perhaps any other species. Think about Roy and Silo, the gay penguins at Manhattan’s Central Park Zoo. This male homosexual couple fell in love and were so eager to have a baby together that they once placed a rock in their nest and sat on it to keep it warm.

Their keeper eventually gave them a fertile egg, which they hatched.

The real world is filled with incidents of gay penguins. Wendell and Cass, a happy pair of male African penguins, live at the New York Aquarium. There are twenty such pairs in Japanese zoos, as well as many throughout Europe.

No animal in recent history except, perhaps, man, has been so celebrated for its homosexuality. Penguins are coming out all over. Including the South Pole.

Funny that the far-right Christians don’t want to deal with that.

A recently published, in-depth article by writer Neil Swidey in the Boston Globe contains this paragraph: “While post-birth development may well play a supporting role, the roots of homosexuality, at least in men, appear to be in place by the time a child is born.”

Swidey goes on to say, “After spending years sifting through all the available data, British researchers Glenn Wilson and Qazi Rahman come to an even bolder conclusion in their forthcoming book Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation, in which they write: ‘Sexual orientation is something we are born with and not `acquired' from our social environment.’”

What do you want to bet that the far-right doesn’t want to deal with this, too?

But it’s something the penguins already know.