Gay Pride March of the Penguins

Julian Sanchez | September 13, 2005

The New York Times reports that conservatives are all atwitter over March of the Penguins, and the monogamous family values exemplified by the flightless fowl. I wonder if the sentiment extends to the Central Park Zoo's Silo and Roy, doubtless influenced to choose the gay penguin lifestyle by the liberal antarctic media.

ADDENDUM: Just wanted to share a comment by "wet blanket" with the class:

Hurray for penguin monogamy! Now if there was only a scientifically proven theory that connects human behavior with animal behavior. Something like common ancestry or biological factors that shape behavior. But that's crazy talk.

Comments

|9.13.05 @ 12:17PM|#

Penguin Lust is natural!

Unless you're doing it with Lola Granola.

|9.13.05 @ 12:21PM|#

I was all set to make some sort of (half, I'm sure) witty comment, and then Jennifer hits me in the face with a big ol' sledgehammer of nostalgia.

|9.13.05 @ 12:23PM|#

Jennifer,

I'll have you know that Penguin Lust is wholly incompatible with the precepts of Scientific Penguinism.

|9.13.05 @ 12:28PM|#

Mediageek--

I sincerely apologize if hitting you in the face with the sledgehammer of nostalgia results in your going around with the black eye of anomie.

Tim Cavanaugh|9.13.05 @ 12:33PM|#

Michael Bay asked the really important question:

"What Has Our Society Come To When March Of The Penguins Is The Blockbuster Hit Of The Summer?"

|9.13.05 @ 1:38PM|#

Am I then to assume that conservatives also approve of parents vomiting pre-chewed food into their children's gullets? Yeah, I could see that.

|9.13.05 @ 1:38PM|#

Why would an intelligent designer make Penguins monogamous yet give so many other creatures the right to have sex with how every many partners they desire?

That's just not fair!

|9.13.05 @ 1:39PM|#

What kind of intelligent designer make Penguins monogamous yet give so many other creatures the right to have sex with how every many partners they desire?

That's just not fair!

|9.13.05 @ 1:41PM|#

Hurray for penguin monogamy! Now if there was only a scientifically proven theory that connects human behavior with animal behavior. Something like common ancestry or biological factors that shape behavior. But that�s crazy talk.

Stormy Dragon|9.13.05 @ 1:42PM|#

Is anyone else irritated that our society has become so political that PENGUINS are considered a divisive partisan issue?

Jeff P.|9.13.05 @ 1:49PM|#

SPD: Not just feeding the young via regurgitation, but warming them by wedging them tightly against one's naked genitals!

And what about that Nat'l Geo special a while back that showed how over half of all koala births are the result of rape?

|9.13.05 @ 1:56PM|#

Does this mean Penguins were also created in the unique image of god (since monogamy is apparently very important to god)?

Jeff P.|9.13.05 @ 2:00PM|#

Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot for President!

http://www.batman-superman.com/batman/cmp/penguin.html

|9.13.05 @ 2:00PM|#

According to the movie, penguins change mates each year and leave each other for months at a time.

|9.13.05 @ 2:06PM|#

Does this mean Penguins were also created in the unique image of god

No, they were created in the image of Cole Porter.

Jeff P.|9.13.05 @ 2:08PM|#

Stormy: Yes, penguins are political.
Coming this winter: The Million Penguin March.

|9.13.05 @ 2:12PM|#

Don't you mean the Half-Million Penguin March?

bill|9.13.05 @ 2:14PM|#

From the article: Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, told the young conservatives' gathering last month: "You have to check out 'March of the Penguins.' It is an amazing movie. And I have to say, penguins are the really ideal example of monogamy. These things - the dedication of these birds is just amazing."

Did he miss the part about the penguins being serial monogamists? That they choose a new mate each year? Sounds like Lowry could just as well be endorsing divorce and ritual abandonment of the family.

|9.13.05 @ 2:36PM|#

I think I read somewhere that most penguin couples are simply living together without benefit of matrimony.

Jeff P.|9.13.05 @ 2:41PM|#

It should be noted that Tennessee Tuxedo had no respect for authority.

Also we should be proud that we got this far down the board without a Monty Python reference...

Timothy|9.13.05 @ 2:45PM|#

Let my just preface this by saying that I love penguins. They are by far the best animal on the planet, because they are awesome.

I agree with Stormy: what kind of world is it where flightless birds living in a vast frozen wasteland are a political point? Although I think the NYT story is one of those HI stories that extrapolates a trend from a tiny sampling, that anybody could think serially monogomous 3-ft birds should be an example of anything other than awesome birds is just sad.

The movie is just about Emporer Penguins, there are 17-species of penguin. Some of which are found in warm water.

|9.13.05 @ 2:48PM|#

Lowry is just the sort of sick monster that would inaccurately represent the mating habits of birds!

|9.13.05 @ 2:55PM|#

Jeff P,

BURMA!

|9.13.05 @ 3:00PM|#

SPD: Not just feeding the young via regurgitation, but warming them by wedging them tightly against one's naked genitals!

Yes, but that wouldn't exactly work for Chilly Willy, now would it? :)

|9.13.05 @ 3:05PM|#

This seems like a giant non-sequitor. How is this evidence of intelligent design? What kind of designer would make animals nearly freeze to death to procreate?

"To Andrew Coffin, writing in the widely circulated Christian publication World Magazine, that is a winning argument for the theory that life is too complex to have arisen through random selection.

"That any one of these eggs survives is a remarkable feat - and, some might suppose, a strong case for intelligent design," he wrote. "It's sad that acknowledgment of a creator is absent in the examination of such strange and wonderful animals. But it's also a gap easily filled by family discussion after the film."

Jeff P.|9.13.05 @ 3:13PM|#

No ID: Not to mention the whole 80%-of-offspring- eaten-by-whales thing.

|9.13.05 @ 3:13PM|#

No ID-The same god that would make platypi. Or those odd little worms that live near sulfurous vents on the ocean floor. Or people who can't deal with the simple proposition that life adapts to its environment. It's almost as if the species most likely to survive in a given environment had been selected somehow.

|9.13.05 @ 3:31PM|#

Sounds like Lowry could just as well be endorsing divorce and ritual abandonment of the family.

Well, certainly Newt Gingrich would...

|9.13.05 @ 3:33PM|#

"Why would an intelligent designer make Penguins monogamous yet give so many other creatures the right to have sex with how every many partners they desire?

That's just not fair!"

My understanding (very limitted) is that monogamy has value mother critters that require a father to maximize the chance of survival for their offspring, but has no value to mother critters where the father cannot be useful at that task.

For a human father (and a penguin father too, perhaps) this means that he has to have some degree of certainty that it is his offspring, his genes, that will survive, not some other man's.

For a human mother, being selective about which man's penis gets her pussy, allows her to select a father who will help in the offspring's development, thereby maximizing the chance that her genes will survive.

As far as I can tell, their nothing about manogamy that be traced to religion. Instead, it is completely natural.

|9.13.05 @ 3:39PM|#

Not just feeding the young via regurgitation, but warming them by wedging them tightly against one's naked genitals!

I, for one, try very hard not to put anything cold against my naked genitals.

|9.13.05 @ 3:40PM|#

"Coming this winter: The Million Penguin March."

The Penguins!
United!
Can Nev-Ooh, fish! Fish! Fish!

waddle waddle waddle

|9.13.05 @ 6:42PM|#

jdog:

monogamy is natural for some species, but not all species

if conservatives want to point at behaviors of animals for humans to emulate, (which I realize, they don't really want to do, unless the behavior coincides with their biblically based belief systems) it seems logical to look a species that is much more closely related to us than a species of bird: that's right, I'm talking about the bonobo, or "lesser chimpanzee"

whereas chimps solve social conflicts by violent interactions, bonobos solve social conflicts by sexual interactions. if two individuals are "fighting", they'll rub their genitals together to make nice with each other

I want to see Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson display their Christian, brotherly love for one another by rubbing their penises together on the 700 club

|9.13.05 @ 7:38PM|#

I, for one, try very hard not to put anything cold against my naked genitals.

Some people do, though. The other night I was channel-surfing and caugh a few minutes of that Talk Sex show with the dirty-talkin' grandma on Oxygen. There was a discussion of ice cubes and oral sex. And did you know some women even put ice inside their ... well, I can scarcely credit it. But Sue the dirty-talkin' grandma warned against doing it too long, or you can get, erm, freezer burn. And personal advice from me -- run ice under water before you put it against your skin or anyone else's. Otherwise it can stick.

|9.13.05 @ 7:39PM|#

Hey, speaking of naturalistic metaphors, what happens when the Monogamous March of the Penguins meets the Hungry Leopard Seal of Infidelity?

|9.13.05 @ 9:07PM|#

I was gonna ask if there are gay penguins. ...and if there are, I was gonna ask how gay penguins find each other amidst all that serial monogamy, and then I saw this comment...

And what about that Nat'l Geo special a while back that showed how over half of all koala births are the result of rape?

...and I thought, well I hope gay penguins aren't like gay koalas! ...but then it hit me that just because koala births are the result of rape, doesn't mean that gay koala sex is a result of rape. ..anyway, that might be true of penguins too.

This would be an interesting experiment. Take, you know, some penguins and wait for that penguin time of the year and then separate the penguins by sex. ...and, well, see if they go for each other.

I don't think it would have any relevance to the human condition or anything, I mean, I don't think I've heard that homo sapiens are gay because, at some point, their choices were limited. ...I just think it'd be interesting.

...I'll have to work on it down at the shelter.

|9.14.05 @ 12:17AM|#

I didn't see the movie, but I seem to recall that when adult penguins take young swimming, when the adult is ready to go it just makes sure that the number of young is equal to the number of young it brought, not necessarily the same young. It takes a village?

I saw a movie once and this guy said that if a goose dies, its mate will look for the dead goose for the rest of its life.

|9.14.05 @ 12:42AM|#

I once read a study on Canadian geese. You might have noticed that, sometimes, when they're migrating, one of the lines on the "V" formation is longer than the other. The biologist wanted to know why.

He looked at wind currents, checked the health of geese that had been captured--perhaps there was less stress on one side of the "V" given the direction of the wind, he thought?

...He thought, perhaps it was generational? ...Perhaps some are stronger fliers on one side than the other? ...Maybe one of them ended up on one side or the other realtive to how much they'd eaten recently?

...None of it panned out.

In the end, the researcher deduced that when you see a "V" formation of Canadian geese, and one side of the "V" line is longer than the other, the reason the line is longer is because there are more geese in the line on that side!

Lee|9.14.05 @ 8:04AM|#

Having seen the movie, I want to mention that this monogomy is only for one breeding cycle.

So it seems I should be siring one child at a time with as many different woman as will have me.

Ladies, please take a number ;)

Larry A|9.14.05 @ 3:51PM|#

Personally, I'll flock with the penguins in Madagascar.

They break out of the zoo and hijack a ship to get "home" to Antarctica. (Via dropping the lion, zebra, girraffe, etc. off on Madagascar.) None of that swimming-all-the-way stuff for them.

Then there's the scene when they finally make it "home."

For a long minute they stand just off the bow of the ship in a raging blizard. Finally the leader says, "Well. This sucks."

And they sail the ship back to Madagascar where they can work on their tans.