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Kookaburra shoved into closet! Who will become the gayest in the animal kingdom now?

Sad news from Australia this week: The gayest goose in the animal kingdom was shoved into the closet. Yes – that merry king of the bush, that laughing lark, that faithful old gum tree-dweller, the kookaburra, has been stripped of his gayness.

Cry, kookaburra! Cry, kookaburra! A lie your life must be!

My good buddy Jade Gulliver of Melbourne’s JOY 94.9FM (Diff’rent Strokes! Wednesdays at 8! Listen live!) alerted me to the catastrophe. It seems kids at Cheltenham’s Lepage Primary in Victoria have been instructed to replace “how gay your life must be” with “how fun your life must be” in the best children’s song ever.

Principal Garry Martin said yesterday he taught the lyrics to grade one pupils using an old tape of the famous song.

“It uses gay and I just suggested to kids, ‘Nowadays that can mean different things, so let’s just sing a fun old time’,” he said. “It was my decision to replace it. I guess that was hypersensitive of me.”

Mr Martin said some children used “gay” to bully others without knowing the meaning of the expression. “Political correctness is to the fore in schools — what’s appropriate and what isn’t — and sometimes we rightly or wrongly err on the side of caution,” he said.

Well, his heart was in the right place.

This isn’t the first time gay animals have come under attack. Why, just last season on Parks and Recreation, Leslie Knope was forced to transfer two penguins from the Pawnee Zoo when outraged citizens began lining the zoo’s walls with “Flipper and Eve! Not Flipper and Steve!” graffiti.

And so, of course the New York Times also had to weigh in. “Can Animals Really Be Gay?” they asked.

Answer: Yes, apparently.

“Homosexual animals are not regarded with suspicion by their own species,” a zoo director told NYT. “There is absolutely no rejection of homosexual companions, like you often find with humans.”

So with the kookaburra back in the closet, I suppose it’s up to us to decide which animal will carry the “gayest” mantle. Here are my suggestions.

Penguins. We’re all familiar with And Tango Makes Three, the children’s book based on the true story of two male penguins from the Central Park Zoo who were given an egg to hatch and raise when they couldn’t have one of their own. They were the inspiration for Flipper and Steve. Also, there’s a gay penguin couple at the San Francisco Zoo named Harry and Pepper.

Koalas. Researchers in Australia discovered that “Female koalas indulge in lesbian ‘sex sessions,’ rejecting male suitors and attempting to mate with each other, sometimes up to five at a time.”

Bonobos. LiveScience.com says, “Considered the closest living relative to humans, bonobos are not shy about seeking sexual pleasure. Nearly all of these peace-loving apes are bisexual and often resolve conflict by the ‘make love, not war’ principle. They copulate frequently and scream out in delight while doing so.”

Black swans. BuzzFeed shared a story this year in which they reported that “20% of all [black swan] pairings are homosexual couples, with a quarter of all black swan families parented by homosexual couples that remain together for years.” Male black swans even sometimes use a female for her birthing services then adopt the chicks once they’re hatched.

Dolphins. Esquire is only one of many magazines that has printed the graphic details of gay dolphin sex. We strive to keep it PG-13 around here, but the way lady dolphins do it? Well, it’s cunning.

Who gets your vote for gayest animal in the animal kingdom? It’s OK to say kookaburra. Mine is still kookaburra too. (Besides, my Aussie friends tell me they changed back the lyrics the next day.)

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