Sometimes the stuff in my inbox makes me shake my head in disbelief.
The Philadephia Zoo is having a Gay Community Day. This is apparently the first time the zoo has invited the LGBT community in its gates. Up until now, gays and lesbians have been sneaking in, dressed like straight people.
Sometime they’re even disguised as parents with children.
The zoo says the event, which will run from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. April 18, will provide a safe and welcoming environment for LGBT and ally individuals to experience the multitude of offerings at the nation’s oldest zoo.
I have to say, it’s going to be really neat for LGBT people to see wild animals through the bars like everybody else has been able to do all these 150 years.
I was just relieve to find out that “Gay Day at the Zoo” wasn’t another huge backward step in our civil rights. I was afraid the Mormon Church had banded with the Catholic Church to co-sponsor an initiative in Pennsylvania that would allow gays to be locked up annually and put on display for the God-fearing public to view.
I guess this follows the “Gay Day” at Disneyland trend, an marketing attempt to pull in those lucrative rainbow-colored dollars usually spent in gay and lesbian bars, on Olivia Cruises, at Village People reunion concerts, and at Home Depot.
(A special day makes more sense in Disneyland, where Peter Pan and Tinkerbell live, after all.)
But if that wasn’t enough gay zoo news, apparently a right-wing Polish politician is claiming his local zoo bought a “gay” elephant.
I don’t make this stuff up!
Michal Grzes, a counselor from the western city of Poznan, noted that the elephant, Ninio, prefers the company of other males, and challenged the zoo’s fiscal wisdom for acquiring him.
“We didn’t pay 37 million zlotys ($11 million U.S.) for the largest elephant house in Europe to have a gay elephant live there,” said Grzes, according to London’s Daily Mail. “We were supposed to have a herd,” Grzes continued, “but as Ninio prefers male friends over females, how will he produce offspring?” (With the help of a childless lesbian elephant, duh.)
Ninio, who is 10, has changed zoos three times in the past five years because of his aggressive behavior toward females, in contrast to his affectionate treatment of males. The head of the zoo contends that any conclusions about Ninio’s sexual orientation are premature because the elephant will not reach sexual maturity until age 14.
On his 14th birthday, the zoo plans to offer to take the elephant either dancing in a club or to a NASCAR race, and will wait to see which he chooses before trying to expand the herd.
We’ve been experiencing a weird phenomenon lately. People have been addressing my 12-year-old son and me as “ladies”.
