Roy and Silo - Impact

Impact

Roy and Silo were not the first same-sex male penguin couple to be known in New York, as pairing of two penguins named Wendell and Cass at New York Aquarium was reported in 2002. However, attention was first brought to Roy and Silo after The New York Times published a story about them in May 2004. The article described them as "gay penguins", and listed two other pairs of penguins in New York that showed similar behaviour. It was brought back into the spotlight by the release of the film March of the Penguins in 2005, as American conservatives and Christian fundamentalists pushed that the film demonstrated Christian values, and so American liberals pushed back by highlighting Roy and Silo's story.

Roy and Silo's story became the basis for two children's books, And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell and illustrated by Henry Cole, and the German language Two Daddies for Tango by Edith Schrieber-Wicke and Carola Holland. And Tango Makes Three itself became controversial, being listed as one of the top ten most banned books in public libraries and schools across America for five years in a row, but became a bestseller. Roy and Silo have also been featured as characters in theatrical works, including the play Birds of a Feather, a character driven piece about both gay and straight relationships, which made its début in Fairfax, Virginia in July 2011. And Then Came Tango, a play/ballet for young audiences by Emily Freeman, was premiered during the March 2011 Cohen New Works Festival at The University of Texas at Austin. The Austin Chronicle recognized the production with an Honorable Mention in its "Top 10 Theatrical Wonders of 2011."

Certain groups jumped on the breakup of the pair as a victory for their ideals. Warren Throckmorton said through Christian right organisation Focus on the Family that "For those who have pointed to Roy and Silo as models for us all, these developments must be disappointing. Some gay activists might actually be angry." A spokesperson for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force responded by explaining that the actions of two penguins is not a good way of answering the question of whether sexual orientation is a choice or a birthright. A 2010 study by France's Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology found that homosexual pairings in penguins is widespread, but such parings don't usually last more than a few years.

The publicity on the subject has caused public outcry among gay and lesbian communities when stories were published of zoo keepers forcibly splitting up same sex penguin couples. This has been in some cases because of the dwindling numbers of some species of penguins. The act of allowing a same sex pair of penguins to adopt either an egg or a chick in the same manner as Roy and Silo has been repeated more than once. In 2009 German zoo keepers repeated the act of giving an egg to a male same sex pair of Humboldt Penguins named Z and Vielpunkt, hatched the egg and raised the chick. In 2011, Chinese zoo keepers gave a chick to a male same sex pair of penguins to look after, once it became apparent that the chick's natural parents could not look after two chicks. At the Central Park Zoo itself there has been further same sex couples, with both an all male couple who were named Squawk and Milo, and an all female couple named Georgey and Mickey conducting courtship behaviour.