this is my favourite gay animal story.. so please indulge me..
heh..
Feb. 23 - Birds do it. Bees do it. And, it turns out, even
the penguins at the Central Park Zoo do it. So let's do it: Let's
let gay people make a lifelong commitment to each other openly and
in public.
I reached this Cole Porter-esque conclusion on Valentine's Day
when, in my ongoing quest to understand why some heterosexuals
believe that gay marriage will destroy their "traditional"
marriages, I stopped by the Central Park Zoo to interview the
famously gay penguins, Roy and Silo. You may not know about Roy and
Silo, but we New Yorkers have been mighty proud since they came out
in 1998. Finally, instead of having New York's collective sex life
defined by the floozy, commitment-challenged heterosexual women of
"Sex and the City" or the pages of personal ads taken out by single
losers, we finally had a First Couple of Monogamy that would show
the world that love and fidelity could still conquer all (plus,
they looked great in their little tuxedos).
Roy and Silo's love is a story for the ages. Like so many great
lovers, Roy and Silo met in a zoo holding tank in 1998. They were
young then, and unsure of themselves sexually like many adolescents
(and when I say "adolescents," of course, I mean me). But their
attraction could not be denied, and they have remained inseparable,
according to Central Park Zoo penguin keeper Rob Gramzay.
Gramzay knew that Roy and Silo had paired off, because at breeding
time, they did everything the "straight" penguins did: they built a
nest, they defended it from others and engaged in what zookeepers
euphemistically call "ecstatic display." It sounds kinky, but it
simply means that the penguins stand straight up, stretch out their
wings and entwine their necks. It's the penguin equivalent of going
to City Hall in San Francisco. (As an aside, isn't S.F. mayor Gavin
Newsom a genius? By allowing gays to marry, not only is he sending
a powerful civil rights message, but every one of those gay couples
had to buy a marriage license. At $83 a pop, Newsom has added
almost $400,000 to the strapped civic treasurymoney that certainly
won't be refunded when President Bush amends the Constitution to do
something no reasonable compassionate conservative would ever do:
Make it less protective of individual freedom and personal liberty
rather than more).
Back in the tank, Roy and Silo's behavior indicated that they
really wanted a kid. Zookeepers gave them a dummy penguin egg, just
to see if they'd actually incubate it. When they did, zookeepers
gave them an actual egg, which Roy and Silo again incubated. When
the baby chick was born, Roy and Silo cared for it, feeding it
yummy regurgitated smelt and keeping it warm until it could survive
on its own.
Years later, Roy and Silo are still going strong. And so are all
their heterosexual penguin pals who share the tank with them. So
that dispels one myth about gay marriage: Roy and Silo's commitment
to each other has not destroyed the sanctity of the other penguin
marriages. Gramzay said the penguin divorce rate remains the same
as it was before Roy and Silo hooked up.
Not that you see much "hooking up." I'll admit it, I had gone to
Central Park in hopes of seeing some hot gay penguin sex, but it
turns out that penguins pretty much ignore each other until mating
season, which begins in about six weeks. So when I visited the tank
last week, Roy was puttering around with a rock while Silo swam and
barely made eye contact. In other words, they looked liked an old
married couple.
Besides, sex in the penguin worldstraight or gayisn't all that
hot (and it's barely sex). Penguins don't have genitals, per se, so
gay penguin sex is exactly the same as straight penguin sex (not to
be graphic here, but it basically involves the locking of cloacae.
Can I say "cloacae" on a family Web site?). The only difference,
Gramzay said, is that Roy and Silo unlock before, um,
"completion."
That sounded strange to me, so I called my thespian friend, Eric
Oleson (it's okay to call him that because he's openly thespian).
As a gay man, Oleson was impressed by Roy and Silo's commitment to
each other, despite a climax-free sex life. "It's actually kind of
sweet," Oleson said. "They realize that they don't have the
equipment, yet they're still devoted to each other. It shows that
gay marriage is not just about sex." (Another gay-marriage myth
dispelled! Just because a couple can't breed, doesn't mean it can't
love. And, after all, Roy and Silo successfully adopted.)
So if Roy and Silo can do it, why can't humans? Indeed, if
homosexual marriages exist in the animal kingdom, they must be
normal. Then again, many opponents of gay marriage say that
anything animals do is, well, animalistic and they want no part of
it. But by that logic, we should give up straight sex, too, because
animals pretty much invented it (and the French perfected it). And
if Roy and Silo haven't destroyed the other penguins' heterosexual
relationships, why do so many human heterosexuals feel that their
marriages will be undermined just because a few thousand gays in
San Francisco are pledging to spend the rest of their lives
together?
After all, human marriage has somehow survived a 50-percent divorce
rate. As Roy and Silo prove in their tank in Central Park, marriage
will survive letting gays into the imperfect club,
too.
