Then they came for the gay penguins
Some stories about anti-gay paranoia are so absurd they take the breath away. This is one of them. An illustrated children's book, And Tango Makes Three, is under attack from conservative Christians in the Midwest who object to school libraries making the book freely available to children because of the "homosexual undertones" of two male penguins living together in Central Park Zoo and raising a female penguin chick, Tango. Based on a true story, Roy and Silo are given a fertilized egg to raise as their own by a sympathetic zookeeper who had observed their futile efforts to create an egg of their own.
In Shiloh, Ill., a mother was reading the book to her child when she reached the part about their same-sex relationship and stopped dead. Closed the book. No one was going to force her child to read about the "homosexual lifestyle." You have to understand that conservative Christians are taught that being gay is a sinful choice, not something you're born with, like blue eyes. They're wrong, and science has proved them wrong, but read on. The mother raised her concerns about the book to the school, where a teacher-parent committee recommended moving "And Tango Makes Three" to the mature shelf for reading with parental permission only. To her credit, superintendent Jennifer Filyaw refused, arguing in effect that she runs a school for everyone, not just the Christian Right.
To complete the absurdity of the story, conservative Christians are now celebrating that Roy and Silo have split up after Silo took up with a female penguin recently arrived from the San Diego Zoo. As a psychology professor at conservative Grove City College in western Pennsylvania put it, Silo is the first "ex-gay" penguin.
And now, back to reality.