Gay animal couples have a lot to teach us about love, life, and grieving

Same-sex coupling is not the sole province of us homo sapiens. Neither is mourning the death of our partners. 

When Magic the penguin recently died, its same-sex partner Sphen mourned by singing, and their rookery joined in. 

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“We’re not entirely sure exactly what was being said in these moments of singing, but it was definitely a beautiful moment to witness,” Renee Howell, the aquarium’s penguin keeper told Australia’s ABC.

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In 2018, their courtship became international when the two male gentoo penguins — a power couple at the aquarium — exhibited more than a mere bromance.  Their romance and inseparable bond amazed their caretakers at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium. 

Sphen and Magic’s six-year relationship is not unusual because same-sex penguin coupling is common, and gentoo penguins are for being romantic, monogamous, and equalitarian in their division of labor: especially in nest building, feeding, fostering, and raising chicks.

Same-sex coupling is not a new phenomenon in the animal world. However, its disclosure and acceptance have grown in recent times, especially since, back in the day — just like LGBTQ+ love — it was closeted, pathologized, and erased.

During the summer of 2005, more than a year after same-sex marriage became legal in the state, Boston’s beloved pair of swans in the Public Garden — named Romeo and Juliet — began a love affair that dared not speak its name. As Bay Staters bantered and bickered over whether the two should be allowed to stay together or be separated, these swans were being subjected to the same queries that have plagued same-sex couples in heterosexist societies for centuries.

Assuming that the swans were heterosexual until one of their eggs went unfertilized, Boston’s Parks and Recreation Department decided to conduct a “detailed gender test” by examining the swans’ reproductive organs. The findings disclosed that Romeo and Juliet were really more like Juliet and Juliet.

The city disclosed its findings, but very reluctantly, “for fear of destroying the image of a Shakespearean love story unfolding,” The Boston Globe reported.

Some people, like Laura Elsheimer of Hudson, Massachusetts, told the Globe that the city zoo “should have a Romeo.” Spokeswoman Mary Hines of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department told the Globe, “Each year when the swans go in, the kids immediately come to us and say,’ Which one’s Romeo and which one’s Juliet?'”

However, neither girl swan lamented, “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” Why? Because on any given day at the Public Garden, you could see them swimming happily together in the lagoon.

Moreover, the swans had been cohabiting for two years. Animal scientists have observed the monogamous nature of swans, whether they’re in opposite-sex or same-sex coupling — they stay with their mates until death, which can occur between 20 and 30 years.

In 2024, sadly, the Christian Right still holds to its premise that homosexuality is an aberrant behavior and found only in those lost few.

However,  Bruce Bagemihl’s “Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity” was cited by the American Psychiatric Association in a “friend of the court” brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Lawrence v. Texas case that led to state anti-sodomy laws being found unconstitutional. According to Bagemihl, homosexual activity occurs in more than 450 species of animals, both in the wild and in captivity, and same-sex couplings in animals can be as enduring and lifelong as they are in humans.

For the religious fundamentalists, however, these findings are discarded on the premise that man can fight such “animal” same-sex attractions. In contrast, animals cannot fight them because God has uniquely given humans the capacity to reason.

Sphen and Magic’s relationship thrived because it wasn’t influenced and controlled by outside homophobic forces. They lived a life that many of us LGBTQ+ couples still strive to. Local and international fans of the power penguin couple expressed their condolences on Magic’s passing. Brett from the U.K. wrote, “You and your partner Magic showed the world that same-sex love is indeed natural and that same-sex partners make brilliant parents. You will be missed.”

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