And Tango Makes Three
Cute.
Roy and Silo weren’t like the other penguins at the Central Park Zoo. The two males paired off and raised a hatchling chick, becoming a same-sex penguin family and media darlings. Justin Richardson, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia and Cornell, collaborated with playwright Peter Parnell, his partner, and illustrator Henry Cole to put together a children’s book about the animals’ story, And Tango Makes Three ($15, ages 4–8).
How did you first hear about this story?
It was over breakfast on a Saturday morning. I came across this story in the New York Times, and since we only had one copy, I read it to Peter. And it just sounded like a children’s book with these sweet, adorable characters wanting something so badly.
What was your aim in writing this book?
We very much wanted to write a book that treated the subject of same-sex couples that kids will adore. Tango is so cuddly. We’re hoping kids will love it and beg their parents to read it again and again, since children are bumping into children from these same-sex families at school and at birthday parties. This [book] makes it comfortable for parents to talk about these families.
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What else ya got for me? This:
*’Queer Pages’ boost gay firms
*Mayor to face trial for gay weddings
*Soni Razdan to make film on homosexuality
*Gay Oregon College Students Receive Death Threats
November 20
Do gay penguins have a place in school libraries?
I am a little bit disappointed by the “Gay population” in our society.
Why can’t they live their life and their sexuality without bothering others?
I think everybody has the right to choose their sexuality, but accept the consequences that come with it.
Nowadays, you have more and more homosexual couples who either want to have children or adopt kids. But there is a big
problem here. If “Mother Nature” wanted homosexuals to have babies she would have provided the tools for it. So why do these people keep
forcing the world to accept and listen to their point of view?
They have created more problems for the gay communities that anything else.
They talk about rights being equal, but homosexuals can’t have babies so where is the equality? They talk about raising children. But how are you going to raise children if you can’t have babies? They talk about family, but most families are composed of a father, mother and children. (I am not talking here about divorces, or other such issues)
And the most important thing for me is the health of these children. Everybody knows that children need to have a model to build themselves (father, mother, uncle, aunt …). So excuse my French, but I don’t know where the gay way of life fits in here. I am so exhausted of these gays and their wishes. I agree that they should have the same rights as any human (I mean insurance, health, …) but that’s it.
So please, why don’t you be “GAY” and let other people live their lives?
Now they wrote this book about these penguins that raised an egg. Before getting exited about it, let’s think about it.
First this story happened in a zoo; that means in condition of captivity. Could we find the same thing in the nature where the birds a completely free? I am pretty sure that if you put two women or two men in jail for a long period of time I would not be surprised if they had a sexual relationship. Why? Because we are mammals and need “Contacts & Relationships”. So please stop this brainwashing about these two little cute penguins that didn’t have any other choice to get together because:
– human beings destroyed their environment
– human beings forced them to live in captivity and ended up raising an egg because this is their purpose in life: To reproduce to survive.
So, stop putting human feelings behind this kind of behavior. Try to be honest with yourself at least once in your life. Face your responsibilities.
I would say in conclusion that this book could have been a good book if it reflected the real conditions of captivity of these animals and their adaptation to their new environment. I don’t think this is a cute story. This is a shame for humanity. They put animals in zoos and destroy their behavior and get astonished when these animals develop unusual behavior. I am not sure they would be together if they were free. Find a mate, reproduce and create a family. This is the “cycle of life” not the “cycle of homosexuality”.
Oh yes, hope for humanity, excellent advice. And while you are at it, you might as well get onto all of the discussion boards for impotent heterosexual couples out there and tell them that nature didn’t intend for them to have a child, so they should stop trying, and stop inspiring all of those Lifetime dramas about adoption. Evidently your version of “hope for humanity” invovles staying quiet and doing everything in your power to remain unobtrusive until people descide to be understadning on their own. It would seem you have never wanted to fit into a role that is unorthodox (but thanks to science and the civil rights movements of the 19th and 20th century) perfectly feasible.
And regarding the human evils behind the penguin behavior- it is impossible to determine precisely how animals would act without human intervnetion, because we have touched the whole world. Zoos can be terrible things, yet there are instances where they are preferrable to leaving an animal in an environment that the majority of humanity will not protect, collectively. And in some instances, when warmth is seen between two animals in an unexpected way, it is our choice to sit and wonder at it, or to feel shame. Some humans see god in the world, some see chaos. While it is certainly unreasonable to allow the anthropomorphic idealism get too carried away, it is harmless to find some measure of lovliness in tenderness between two creatures, should it be mutual and secure. We will never know if those creatures would have developed that bond in the wild, yet the if does not matter. They found a way to cope by forming a bond that worked for them, just as humans have. And before you bemoan the horrors of zoos, I want you to consider the zoo that we have put ourselves in, complete with bars compased of social norms and a misery that can only come from being completely estranged not from our conception of “Natural”, but from who we each are, individually.
This book has the potential to open minds and open hearts, even if it is somewhat idealistic. Please accept this, at least. A child will not think of sex when they read this book, they will simply think of the magic of something wonderful and almost impossible happening to two creatures who wanted it very much, and who ended up saving a life in the process.
All of the best.