And Tango Makes Three

And Tango Makes Three

This morning I heard a very heart-warming story on the radio. It’s the story of a book banning. Apparently, a few years ago at the Central Park Zoo, there were these two chinstrap penguins that got particularly friendly and started living together, making a nest together. Their names were Roy and Silo. There was nothing terribly unusual about that except that they were both males. The zookeepers saw no harm in it, so they were left to do as they pleased. Then it was noticed that one of the penguins was sitting on a rock in its nest, presumably trying to hatch it. It so happened that there was an egg that another pair of penguins had rejected for one reason or another, so the zookeeper placed that egg into the nest, replacing the rock. Both Roy and Silo took turns sitting on the egg until it hatched. Thus was born little Tango, daughter to Roy and Silo. In fact, Tango would not exist were it not for the parenting instincts of Roy and Silo. The three lived on happily at the Central Park Zoo until some visitor heard their story and wrote a delightful children’s book about it. That’s when the trouble began.

The two men who wrote the book about Roy, Silo and Tango and the loving family they had formed suddenly found themselves caught in a maelstrom of indignation from the Christian right. Under Florida book banning statutes, And Tango Makes Three was pulled from the shelves of Florida primary schools as it was deemed inappropriate for children due to its overtones of homosexuality. The publishers brought a lawsuit against the Florida school system and claimed that there was nothing offensive about the book as it had no offensive language or sexually explicit overtones. The publishers are suing the local school board and its superintendent as well as the state education commissioner and the state board of education. In other words, this is a lawsuit that goes right at the “Don’t say gay” laws enacted by Governor Ron DeSantis. One of the points of the lawsuit is that the 40 books that have been banned by the local school board are all relating to the subject matter of LGBTQ issues.

The reaction to the lawsuit by Florida and Governor DeSantis has been to expand the book banning restrictions from K-3rd Grade to 3rd – 8th Grade in an attempt to broaden the scope of the restrictions. I can only imagine that before long they will broaden that once again to high school and then to adults as well. Live free or die, right? DeSantis’ reaction was to suggest that he is the protector of “a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy”. I guess Ron De Santos is the best arbiter of sanity and normalcy.

Of course, the concern that is often stated for such LGBTQ related book banning is that they are somehow a part of the recruitment by aberrant forces to win over pliable young minds and thereby distort their ability to freely choose to be straight. One of the ironies of all of this is that the story of Roy, Silo and Tango does not end with Tango simply living happily with Roy and Silo for the rest of her life. Indeed, Tango grew up in her penguin community and found her own mate, a female penguin names Tanuzi. But the story does not end there. Eventually, after six years together, Roy and Silo split up, with Silo going off and hooking up with a female penguin namesake Scrappy. Go figure.

It turns out that despite all the attention paid to the sexual preferences of penguins, over 1,500 species, including dolphins and sheep, are known to have some degree of homosexuality in their communities. There are even some species like bonobos that are known to be bisexual in orientation.

Some zookeepers have not been as enlightened as the ones at the Central Park Zoo. In the case of Buddy and Pedro at the Toronto Zoo, they were separated and effectively forced to mate with female partners. In that case Pedro went on strike and he and his designated partner did not produce any offspring. Buddy, on the other hand, gave it a try and produced some eggs, but then fell short of building a properly accommodative nest, so he and his mate did not produce viable offspring either.

There is enough zoological and genetic evidence to prove that the traits of homosexuality are less aberrant than simply another minority outcome of breeding. This is the case in humans and now many other documented species. Attempts to bend the will of genetics does not seem particularly productive. The happiest penguins are those which are left to go the way their natural instincts tell them to and their choices do not seem to greatly impact the happy evolution of the pack as a whole. Imagine that, diversity seems to actually help and not hurt the population. The only bad thing we see is when there is an unnatural attempt to modify the natural order through force of will.

It may take two to tango, but it takes an entire, enlightened and diverse village to raise a child and perpetuate a species.