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Gay penguins raise chick

Mr Person

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SYDNEY, Australia — It was a young penguin colony, and all but one of the couples were pretty bad parents. They would get distracted from their nests, go for a swim or play, and so neglected eggs were getting cold, likely never to hatch. This was normal for inexperienced penguins, and the aquarium managers didn’t worry. Next mating season would be better. One couple, though, was extraordinary. Not because they were the colony’s only gay penguins, though they were, but because Sphen and Magic looked like they would make great, diligent, careful egg-warming parents. They made the biggest nest, and they sat on it constantly.

Curious, the aquarium managers gave the two males a dummy egg. They took to it. And so then, when a particularly negligent heterosexual penguin couple looked to be leaving an egg exposed (females lay two, but usually only one survives), the aquarium workers figured they would give it to Sphen and Magic. In October, that egg hatched. Now the chick of a gay penguin union is waddling around an ice enclosure by the touristy docks in Sydney.




[cont.]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/style/gay-penguins-australia.html

We've got also a pair of gay swans in Boston Common's main pond, at least during the warmer months. (Or did. It's been a while since they were last written about, or at least, since I noticed it and I don't know how long swans live). If you don't want to use it for debate, well, it's an interesting enough story.



If you do, well.....

I do hope nobody intends to tell me that these penguins and/or swans are going to be sent to hell by a God because of making a "choice" that this God disapproves of.
 
There is a special place in hell for “__________________!” :shock:
 
"I'm Mike Pence and I'm not going anywhere near this thread."
 
Chimpanzees and chickens are cannibals.
 
DH Kirkwood said:
Which means that any arguement based purely on what is 'natural' should be dismissed outright.
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Speaking of natural, perhaps we should look to the lion as a role model. Seeing the lioness he desires, he kills her fatherless cubs, then creates his own offspring. His cubs will survive, not the cubs of the inferior lion who lost a fight and ran away, died or abandoned his offspring.
 

That actually sounds like much of human history, and some parts of the Bible.
 
Masterhawk said:
However, it is a rebuttal to the argument that homosexuality is unnatural.
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No it is not. The homosexuality is unnatural argument is based on a teleological world view. They don't mean natural in the sense that it occurs in nature. They mean natural in the sense that it has to serve a purpose or final cause in the natural order of the world.

From that perspective, gay sex will never lead to procreation and the sex organs of the same sex were not designed to be compatible.

Masterbation, oral sex, and anal sex within heterosexual couples are as unnatural as same sex relations under natural law theory. It is one of my favorite rebuttals to the "homosexuality is unnatural" arguments.
 

I dont believe this is unprecedented. The same behavior has been observed in the wild. Odd, there fellow penguins do not seem to care, perhaps we have something to learn from this species.
 
Mr Person said:
I do hope nobody intends to tell me that these penguins and/or swans are going to be sent to hell by a God because of making a "choice" that this God disapproves of.
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Since you have this... Animals can't sin because sinning is a purposeful turning away from God's plan since animals can't know what he wants they cannot sin and can't go to hell.
 
My problem with the argument that gays can be parents is that it assumes and relies on the premise that heterosexual couples shouldn't/won't be parents of their rightful offspring. This a terrible assumption to start with.

If course there will always be neglected or parentless children but if your marriage or parenting agenda relies on the failures of other parents, we've hit a problem somewhere.

The simple answer fact here is nature did not intend for homosexuality to be passed on, encouraged, or used as a model for parenting, and that's obvious through our biological and evolutionary reproductive system. Of course we can challenge nature but when it's an issue of children, our future, we tread on very dangerous grounds.
 

No, it's not a terrible assumption to start with, as it's proven time and time again that parents are going to be bad parents. There's no stopping it, it's how life is. So starting with that assumption is not terrible, it's truth. Sorry if you don't like the truth. So instead of focusing on how we're saying these parents are bad, why don't you instead focus on those kids that need attention. That's where your head should be, concerned about these kids from homes where the parents are meth addicts or extremely neglectful and potentially even dangerous.

If your only argument on why it's bad is "nature", we already have hypotheses for that - it's called the Gay Uncle theory. Look it up. We can and do challenge nature constantly to make our lives better and easier. Your argument has no basis in reality.
 
CannonballB said:
No, it's not a terrible assumption to start with, as it's proven time and time again that parents are going to be bad parents.
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So wouldn't it be worthwhile looking into how we can change this, however difficult?

Answer me this; ideally, would you agree that a child should (best case scenario) be raised by their biological parents?

Of course there are ****ty abusive parents. My idea is that working on reducing the number of ****ty parents would not only reduce the number of meth addicts (for example), but also produce a much bigger benefit to children. Gays can be good parents. Heteros would be better.

So instead of focusing on how we're saying these parents are bad, why don't you instead focus on those kids that need attention.
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The best thing we could ever do for children is to help their biological parents be healthy, happy, and fit to raise them. Nothing could even come remotely close to that.
 

No. My mother should have never had children. I was lucky, my grandma was the mother my mom couldn't be. Most kids in my position are not so lucky. My brother wasn't. Instead he had to live with my extremely dysfunctional mother and step-father and watch them fight most days, even see my step-dad beat my mom. We also got to deal with an NPD mother who doesn't know what her children need, or even what it means to be a mom (which she readily admits).

So no, I think that statement is ignorant of the real world and it's inhabitants.

RE: gays good parents, straight better, show me the research stating that and I'll believe you. Any research that's been done has not only disagreed with your statement but actually stated the opposite - that sometimes gay couples are BETTER than straight couples at parenting. With gay couples, at least the kid knows their wanted. You can't say that for all children of straight couples. Some examples from Cornell
 
joko104 said:
Chimpanzees and chickens are cannibals.
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As are some humans. Every single action we see in animals we can find an example of humans doing it, because humans are animals.
 
CannonballB said:
No. My mother should have never had children...

So no, I think that statement is ignorant of the real world and it's inhabitants.
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You misunderstood or dodged the question. I said in an ideal scenario, if we could make it possible, do you agree that a child should be raised by their biological parents?

To use your specific example, don't you wish that your mother wasn't abusive and neglectful, and that she was instead helped and supported to raise you caringly? Don't you wish your original mother was as loving as your grandma was?
 

If my mother wasn't a mentally damaged, ****ed up human being, would that be ideal? Of course. I dont think anyone can dispute that. However, there is no help for my mother. That's the point i'm making. Yes, pie in the sky, people need to be helped to become good parents. But that's pie in the sky and I have to work with what I have today, not some ideal future state.

If we can move towards making sure that people with personality disorders (like my mother) don't have children who grow up to be just as ****ed up as them, then sure. I'm down. But until that miraculous day comes, still gotta make due with what I got. And what I got right now is a bunch of children who have no one to love them. So going to a gay family is a ****ton better than being mentally, physically, sexually or otherwise abused in some fashion. Live in the real world please, not some amazing future state.

Also, to dispute your original point, and I already have, gays can be just as good of parents, if not better, than straight people. That's the facts as they stand today. If someday, per your pie in the sky ideals, we did not have mentally unfit people raising children, then yes, the gays would need to find surrogate parents or artificial insemination.

One last thing, we talk about how it's best if biological parents raise their kids. I'm going to devils advocate that - do children who don't know their adopted not bond to their adoptive parents the way a child would to their birth parent? Are there any studies done on this? I question to what extent that the "biological parent" argument is really valid.
 


It isn't their "choice"; it's the animal's instinct to reproduce.

If not enough females are around, males will "mate" with other males ... and vice versa.
If you have first-time parents in the animal kingdom, chances are high that things will go wrong with the upbringing of their first batch.

I can't count the nights I've spent with "first-time" cows and nannies. And even after the delivery, some mothers refused to care for their babies, hence our milk bottles ranging from 8 oz to 3 quarts.

Animals have a "build-in" reproduction instinct. They don't know whether they are male or female, all they know is that at certain times they have to give it their "best shot" to make things happen ... because that's how nature "programmed" them.
 
CannonballB said:
I have to work with what I have today, not some ideal future state.
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But what we do today determines the future state. Nothing happens on its own.

You agree that it is ideal for biological parents to be raising their children instead of this continuous problem where many of them are unfit or unable and the child ends up on the street or in adoption homes. So I think most of our efforts need to be on addressing this, instead of letting it happen but pretending it's OK because gay couples can be there to adopt the child when they have already been thru hell.

Also, to dispute your original point, and I already have, gays can be just as good of parents, if not better, than straight people.
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This is still debatable. Gays have only been raising kids as a legally recognized and supported family model for the last 10-20 years. Heterosexuals have been doing it for millions of years thru famine, disaster, tyranny, plagues, and all sorts of other barriers. It is a tried and tested model for raising kids and growing a society. Homosexuality isn't.

I would argue that it's impossible for anyone to love anything the way a biological parent loves their child. This is especially true for women (mothers) who traditionally show way more love towards their kids than fathers do. That's because fathers don't know what it feels like to carry said child for 9 months thru agony and pain. They'll never have that same intimate connection with a child as the mother forms during pregnancy. So gay male couples will never be able to provide said love to their adopted children.

Granted - with lesbians it is different because they can carry a child via artificial insemination, but that's a different story. Many female animals can get pregnant but still lack the motherly instincts to raise their offspring.

Then yes, the gays would need to find surrogate parents or artificial insemination.
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Which are both terrible avenues to go down on a social level. It will lead to commercial surrogacy, where a woman gives up her body and genitals for the lure of money, often against her will because she has nothing else to eat and is forced to do it. This is not something to embrace or encourage. It's the same as prostitution.
 

Your bull**** slippery slope slop, is just that, bull****. I'm not even going to bother to refute your ignorance because why bother? History is edging out people that think like this. Thank god, it can't come soon enough.

Also, I notice you didn't bother to address or refute my question about adoptive parents and the children of theirs. Depending on the results of that would right there refute every. single. sentence. in this slop.
 

I don't think the preference for biological parents raising children has anything to do with the fact that biological parents are almost always heterosexual. Biological parents are preferred becuae thay are the only two people in the world obligated by law, by the birth of the child, to provide and care for the child. Without them, the child has only a hope that someone else will voluntarily assume those responsibilities. With all the single women raising children on their own we can see this frequently doesn't happen. Children born to single mothers have higher rates of poverty, juvenile delinquency, drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, HS dropouts and criminal conviction as an adult.
Despite the legal fiction of gay marriage, marriage was never limited to men and women in order to exclude homosexuals. It was so limited to include all those who could possibly produce children.
 
Have these "gay penguins" been observed engaging in sex with each other, or have they instead merely rubbed beaks together and shared a nest? I think being "gay" is purely a human invention. Roy and Silo were labeled as gay penguins at the NY Zoo back in the early 90s. Silo later paired with a female and has been nesting with her since. Animal engage in homosexual behavior, but return to heterosexual behavior to breed. These gay penguins usually result from a shortage of females and disappears with an abundance of females. Think its absurd to take the term gay and apply it to animals.
 

In one of the many German zoo programs I watch there is a gay stork couple who are good nest warmers and protectors and they have just been given 2 eggs by the zookeepers from one of the other stork couples, in this case an elderly couple of storks who had laid 4 eggs but the keepers knew they would struggle to raise that many chicks so they decided to give the "gay storks" the other 2 eggs. They started with laying 2 plaster cast eggs in the nest so that the gay storks would start tending to the nest and then swapped those plaster eggs out with the 2 real eggs and hey presto, they now were real parents.

I have even seen gay penguins breed a stone because they had no egg. A "gay" animal outside of mammals is not an issue (also not in human mammals because we can go buy milk in the store) because they do not have to have milk glands to feed their eggs, so gay birds is not an issue at all. People may poo poo it, but those are just weirdo's with weird preconceptions so I do not take them seriously.
 
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