Hi, this is my first post on this board. I will say before I get started that I disagree rather intensely with the prevailing Christian view of alternative sexuality, but hopefully that's no reason we can't be civil and learn from each other, right?
So, I submit, for your consideration, the following New York Times article. You can find it online here.
From the link:
Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo in
Manhattan, are completely devoted to each other. For nearly six years now,
they have been inseparable. They exhibit what in penguin parlance is called
"ecstatic behavior": that is, they entwine their necks, they vocalize to
each other, they have sex. Silo and Roy are, to anthropomorphize a bit, gay
penguins. When offered female companionship, they have adamantly refused
it. And the females aren't interested in them, either.
At one time, the two seemed so desperate to incubate an egg together
that they put a rock in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the
folds of their abdomens, said their chief keeper, Rob Gramzay. Finally, he
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. Mr. Gramzay is full of praise for them.
"They did a great job," he said.
You'd be hard-pressed to convince me that those penguins made a "choice" to have urges toward same-sex member of their species. Yes, I know it happened in a zoo, but wild animals do this too. Just thought I'd see where the debate went from here.
LC