Animal nature: is conversion therapy any more acceptable for gay penguins than it is for humans?Defending the right of gays to be who they are doesn't stop at the gates At the Gates are a Swedish melodic death metal band. They are one of the forebears of the Gothenburg sound of heavy metal along with other bands of the Gothenburg metal scene like Dark Tranquillity and In Flames. to the wild kingdom. A group of European gay activists wrote an open letter in February to the Bremerhaven Zoo in northern Germany demanding that the zoo halt plans to try to turn three male pairs of Humboldt penguins straight with "organized and forced harassment through female seductresses." On the grounds that the birds are an endangered species, the zoo flew in four female penguins from Sweden in an attempt to coax the gays into mating. But the same-sex couples weren't interested, and a high-prone protest ensued, leading zoo director Heike Kuck to declare that all animals could "live here as they please." The controversy prompted Coati coati or coatimundi Any of three species (genus Nasua, family Procyonidae) of raccoonlike omnivores, found in wooded regions from the southwestern U.S. through South America. Planck, advocacy director for the Washington, D.C.-based Family Pride Coalition, to draw some parallels. "The zoo said they were trying to encourage the penguins to breed," she said. "Gay and lesbian people have been hearing the same thing [from their families]: 'We don't want to change you, we just want grandchildren.' Apparently conversion therapy doesn't work any better for penguins than it does for humans." Bremerhaven Zoo officials could have learned that lesson the easy way had they consulted with their colleagues at the Central Park Zoo The Central Park Zoo is located in Central Park in New York City and run by the Wildlife Conservation Society. A redesign of the zoo in 1983–88 executed by the architectural firm of Kevin Roche, Dinkeloo abandoned the old-fashioned menagerie cages for more natural exhibits. in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. , where several same-sex penguin pairs have been happily getting it on--displaying "ecstatic behavior," in zoological terms--for years. Roy and Silo Roy and Silo were a Chinstrap penguin couple in New York's Central Park Zoo. The pair were observed trying to hatch a rock as if it were an egg. When the zoo staff realized that Roy and Silo were both male, it occurred to them to give them the second egg of a mixed-gender , the most famous of the gay penguin couples, made a splash last year when they celebrated their sixth anniversary. "The fact that there have been same-sex pairings suggests that we were managing the collection [of penguins] naturally enough that the full range of behaviors were possible," said zoo director Dan Wharton. In fact, same-sex pairings in nature are common, said Marlene Zuk, a professor of biology at the University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside, commonly known as UCR or UC Riverside, is a public research university and one of ten campuses of the University of California system. , and the author of Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can't Learn About Sex From Animals. Animals exhibit all kinds of sexual behaviors--homo, hetero hetero prefix, Latin, different , monogamous, and nonmonogamous--even having sex to resolve conflicts, she said. "Sexuality in animals, just like sexuality in people, is about more than just making babies," she said. As for the Swedish seductresses, new male penguins have been brought in to attend to their needs. |
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