Diary – 3 December 2005

The world is, suddenly and inexplicably, obsessed with the moral implications of penguins. The Christian Right in America, inspired by the documentary film March of the Penguins, argues that the life-cycle of the emperor penguin demonstrates the truth of ‘intelligent design’ and the importance of ‘monogamy, sacrifice and child-rearing’. Their enemies, in turn, make hay with the gay penguins of Central Park Zoo in New York, and suggest that penguins are prone to have affairs, and do not show much sign of minding if they lose the odd family member to hungry petrels. The debate’s only common predicate is that, whether liberal or conservative, you are expected to regard penguins as moral paragons rather than, say, nasty smelly fish-eating birds with weird little legs. There are precedents for this. One of the most amusing entries in the index to Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality is along the lines of ‘Elephants: as paragons of conjugal virtue.’