Penguins and Prejudice

The two male penguins, who care for an errant egg in the Central Park Zoo, are officially ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE.  And the children ‘s book, “And Tango Makes Three,” documenting this abhorrent situation, according to the National Library Board in Singapore, must immediately be “pulped. “

Explaining that “prevailing norms support teaching children about conventional families, but not alternative, non-traditional families,” the Minister of Communications and Information, Yaacob Ibrahim ordered two other books destroyed, including “The White Swan Express: A Story About Adoption,” and “Who’s in My Family: All About Our Families.”

In the “twisted” plot in Tango, based on a true story, Roy and Silo, male penguins build a nest together like other mating penguins, but alas, they can’t lay an egg.  A Central Park Zookeeper (probably a deviant himself) brings them an egg to sit on; when the egg hatches, the penguin couple have the audacity to parent the chick, who they name Tango.   “The White Swan Express “ follows several families to an orphanage in China, where they adopt girls, who under the “one child per family” policy, have been abandoned primarily because of their gender.  One of the adopting families is oh no, a lesbian couple.

Ornithophobic, homophobic, or just plain idiotic?

When our adopted daughter was itty bitty, I read her all three of these books.  Over and over and over.  We checked them out of our public library and I often talked to the librarian, Miss Kitty, about making sure they had plenty of the available titles that positively portrayed non-traditional families.  She agreed wholeheartedly.

On the first day of kindergarten, in the circle when all the kids introduced themselves and described their families, when they got to our daughter, she said,“I’m Sophie, and I have 2 moms.”  “Two moms, you can’t have two moms,” some of her classmates protested. “Actually, I have three moms,” Sophie insisted.   She has always been comfortable with who she is and with her family constellation.  Instrumental to this was having stories and books that reflected her reality.

I am galled that sixteen years later, reading material that normalizes gay and adoptive families is being banned in a multi-cultural, modern city of 5.4 million people. This ban is driven by surprise, surprise, religious conservatives.  But these forces aren’t limited to Singapore.  In the U.S., the library books most often petitioned for removal are about “homosexuality." 

The American Civil Liberties Union explains that "the urge to censor is hardly the monopoly of any political group. But the greatest threat today comes from the fundamentalist right, with its ideological hostility to other religious or philosophical systems, to homosexuality, to sex education, and indeed to the basic idea of secular education."

This year I plan to make it a point to celebrate Banned Books week on September 21-27.  They have a great website at:  http://www.bannedbooksweek.org., that includes a reading list of must read “banned” books.