Are you referring to the book or the stupid reaction to it?
Yeah, but it’s been established that muldoonthief isn’t one of those people, so for him, it should really be that simple.
Kids catch you off guard. Life catches you off guard. If you aren’t explaining homosexuality because of the penguin book, your kid overhears someone in preschool talking about their uncle. Or they see two men holding hands driving by a park.
It would be really nice if I weren’t blindsided by questions from my kids - particularly the ones that have to do with sex. But even when I’ve been proactive in explaining something - have done the work to develop an age appropriate speech and find an age appropriate book, they walk away without questions only to blindside me with them two months later when I’m unprepared.
Sorry. I thought that by including the “storm of stupid” part of the quote, I was making it clear it’s the reaction that I found exasperating, but I can see that my vagueness is subject to (mis)interpretation.
Birds bonding to each other in odd combinations – even pet birds bonding to mirrors, toys, humans, and other species – happens all the time.
In the natural world, it predates humans.
My parrot building a nest and offering me food does not make our relationship bestiality.
The greater irony is that these same people would undoubtedly disagree with my vegan eating habits on the grounds that I am “anthropomorphizing” animals and “putting them on the same moral plane as humans”. Yet they are up in arms over “gay” penguins.
Baffling.
Sailboat
Do you mean medical community? Or psychological community? Trust me, I know all about the outdated bullshit beliefs that were held inre homosexuality being a disease. That, however, is no longer the case. Nor do I think that fundamentalists are the only ones who think there is something wrong with it.
However, the idea I advanced had to do with those who view homosexuality as a disease that can be cured and their natural reticence to use the word “evolution” to describe or attempt to explain human sexuality.
Med school may still be full of homophobes, but I sort of doubt that they think homosexuality is a disease that can be cured.
He or she may be referencing the DSM, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. As a product of the American Psychiatric Association, it is part of the medical community, although psychologists rely very much on it and contribute significantly to it.
Which still, to the day, refuses to give central significance to the pandemic of Cognitive Dissonance, the Number One threat to the…hey, take your hands off me! Hijack, my ass, Hentor brought it up, I’m just…hey, quit shoving!..uncool!..
Well, sure, but she’s obviously a slut. Look at her! Flashing that milky white breast under his beak like she was somethin’ special. Trash, that’s all she is, fishy oily trashy homewrecker. Silo’s obviously a little lost right now, and needs some time to work out some issues before he finds his happy place again with his husband. Seven year itch, indeed. More like seven year BITCH!
(Seriously. Google Silo and Scrappy. “They” *are *celebrating.)
sigh That’s because you’re oblivious, ya big lunk. She’s got it so bad she’s throwing herself at you. But she can’t be expected to do all the work.
Kiss her, you fool!
What they need to do is, put Roy back in the cage with Silo and Scrappy, dose their herring with just a little Spanish fly, and sell videos of the results. All proceeds benefit the Bi-Bestiality Liberation Front! 
Grits and Hard Toast is essentially on target. I had no idea what the book was about until I had a daughter sitting on my lap waiting to be entertained by the penguins. At that moment, I wasn’t prepared for any questions that book might inspire in her. As I said, there was no indication in the back-cover summary that the 2 penguins involved were male. I have to think someone at the publishing company made a conscious decision to leave that out.
Miller, thank you for your kind words, but I have to say I was certainly raised to be “one of those people”, if not to the extent which col_1022 described. My decision not to be one has been the result of thought and decision making as an adult, so deep down, I’m still uncomfortable with the topic. So yeah, I’d like some time to decide if she and I are ready for questions like this, and not have it come up unexpectedly. It may still do so, and I’ll do my best to answer her questions then, but my answer still might be “you should ask your mother about that”.
BTW, I did ask my wife about this over the weekend, and she agreed they should have had a more descriptive blurb on the book. She also said she would have just read the book as is, and answered whatever questions it raised, so there you go.
And we did all see the penguin movie “Happy Feet” this weekend. No gay penguins, though there was some cross-species courtship and part of the plot was stolen right from “Footloose.”
That’s cool. You sure you don’t want me to call you a Nazi, though? Really, it would be no bother at all.
Which I don’t get. Chinstrap penguins are - to anthropomorphize - serially monogomous. Sometimes they pair bond with the same gender, usually with the opposite gender, but they don’t - from what I’ve been reading - tend to lifebond. So they are celebrating the “raise a chick, dump my partner” tendencies of chinstrap penguins. From what I read, Ray and Silo got together when the zookeppers tried to break apart a bunch of infertile (same sex) pairs by seperating them. In some cases it worked, in some cases they went back to their original partners.
Wendell and Cass are apparently still together. Black footed penguins seem to pair bond for life.
Lesson from nature, animals will form apparently sexual bonds in a bunch of different configurations that Conservative Christians can label “unnatural.” Group “marriages,” serial monogamy, life bonds, same sex life bonds, random encounters, dogs that hump the chair leg.
If I ever have kids, and they ever question me about a delicate topic, first I will grow an evil coprophagous grin; and then I will provide an explanation so lengthy, graphic, lush with detail, and incredibly emotive that I will never, ever be questioned on a delicate topic again. 
“. . . but that presents practical problems because, you see, the anus does not produce its own lubricant like your Mom’s juicy hotbox does when I rub her in the right places, so you gotta use some of this stuff and – well, I’ll show you on the bad-touch doll here . . . hey, where are you going?!”
Heh…I saw the thread title and was ready to come in with guns blazing to defend the kid’s movie. Then I read the OP…
Oh!..okay! Sorry, as you were
… getting together with another male to do some meth and share body rubs, what have you… :rolleyes:
Pardon me, I’m gagging on a mouthful of hypocrisy. Who in their right mind takes the time or mental energy to be outraged over penguins doing what they do ? Amazing.
Batman!
No, **Dangerosa **is. Life throws unexpected questions at you, and at your kids. It’s far better that such questions will come up in response to positive, uplifting, “kid friendly” sources like this book, which gives you a reasonable comfort level within which to discuss such issues, than if the only time such questions comes up is when your child is accidentally exposed to more negative, adult images of homosexuality. This is an opportunity for you to prepare your kid for those inevitable accidental exposures.
This book should make parents breathe a huge sigh of relief: it offers an age-appropriate context in which to discuss something they’ll have to discuss anyway. The only parents who might object to it are those who believe on some level that if they NEVER discuss it, it will never come up. Parents living in a state of denial, in other words.
Thanks, but I’ll disagree with the second paragraph. The parents who object to it are either in a state of denial, or don’t want their kids exposed to positive images of homosexuality. When little Jacob comes home from daycare and says “Austin’s uncle is married to another man!” they want to respond with “that’s disgusting and unnatural and Austin’s uncle is going to hell.” They don’t want their kids getting the impression that homosexuality may, in fact, be a natural state that some people are just born having, and that people who are gay can live normal lives and hold jobs and have families and go to church. I suspect that the second is more common.
(I think I mentioned earlier, my kids went to daycare with a girl with two moms. When my kids figured this out they annouced “Sara has two Moms!” And we responded with “yes, some kids have two moms and no dads, and some have two dads, and some have just one parent, a mom or a dad - there are lots of different kinds of families.” This is really important around our house because we have one biological white daughter and one Asian adopted son - so our family doesn’t “look” like everyone else’s either. Our daycare had several families pull out over Sara’s moms - they didn’t want the questions.)
No, Grits and Hard Toast was on target in describing my experience. I didn’t have a “reasonable comfort level” - I had a daughter in my lap waiting to be entertained, and suddenly realized this book had topics I wasn’t ready to discuss with her. So I changed the story, rather than risk getting questions I wasn’t prepared for at that moment - since I could do that without her knowing it. I didn’t sidestep or evade her questions, which I agree is not a good thing - I prevented them from occurring when I wasn’t ready for them.
Please don’t misunderstand me - I agree this is a very good book for introducing the topic, and encouraging such questions. But only if the parent is prepared, and as I’ve said 3 times before - there’s no external indication that this book has such topics in it.