Academic

John McCain, Gay Adoption, and Penguins

By David S. Cohen

Strange mix here, but I thought John McCain’s recent insistence that, despite being a parent of an adopted child, he doesn’t “believe in gay adoption” is a nice segway into this story about how homosexuality has been observed to appear naturally in over 1500 species.  McCain presumably wouldn’t approve of Roy and Silo:

Two penguins native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male.

Robert Gramzay, a keeper at the zoo, watched the chinstrap penguin pair roll a rock into their nest and sit on it, according to newspaper reports. Gramzay found an egg from another pair of penguins that was having difficulty hatching it and slipped it into Roy and Silo?s nest. Roy and Silo took turns warming the egg with their blubbery underbellies until, after 34 days, a female chick pecked her way into the world. Roy and Silo kept the gray, fuzzy chick warm and regurgitated food into her tiny black beak.

- David S. Cohen

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on July 15, 2008 (boomark / email).