Can animals really be gay?

Last week, at the select committee on the same-sex marriage bill, a lawyer for the Christian Institute revealed that a teacher had been disciplined for refusing to read to her charges a book about gay penguins. It is par for the course to teach kids about adult stuff through animal tales. So it makes sense that an educational establishment that wants to imbue children with respect for gay lifestyles would foist gay animals upon them. But what is striking today is how seriously adults take, or are expected to take, the idea that penguins and all other beasts can be properly gay.

In February an academic at the University of East Anglia made waves when he upbraided David Attenborough for focusing too much on hetero humping in the animal kingdom and failing to feature gay animal sex. Many gay rights activists and gay-friendly scientists seem positively obsessed. The belief is that if they can photograph two male penguins fornicating, or document the life of lesbian dogs, then they might finally prove that homosexuality is natural and put an end to all those nasty moral condemnations of gay humans.