Gay Penguins Too Much
For Missouri Towns
by 365Gay.com from
the Web, March 4, 2006
Savannah, Missouri -- A
popular children's book about two male penguins who raise a baby penguin has
been moved out of the children's sections of two local libraries after parents
complained it promoted homosexuality.
"And Tango Makes Three," is based on a true story of two male penguins, named
Roy and Silo, who adopted an abandoned egg at New York City's Central Park Zoo
in the late 1990s.
The book, written by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, was moved the
non-fiction sections of Rolling Hills' Consolidated Library's branches in
Savannah and St. Joseph in northwest Missouri.
Silo and Roy are chinstrap penguins. They set up housekeeping together and
for six years were completely devoted to each other and inseparable.
Their chief keeper, Rob Gramzay discovered that the couple put a rock simulating
an egg in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds of their
abdomens.
Gramzay finally gave them a fertile egg that needed care to hatch. Things
went perfectly. Roy and Silo sat on it for the typical 34 days until a
chick, Tango, was born. For the next two and a half months they raised
Tango, keeping her warm and feeding her food from their beaks until she could go
out into the world on her own.
Zoologists say that it is an over simplification to call the penguins gay, but
exactly what bound the two, and other examples of same-sex relationships among
animals remains a mystery.
Early last year, after "And Tango Makes Three" was written the penguin couple
broke up. For a brief period Roy lived with a female penguin.
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