London Zoo Having a Pride Party for Its Gay Penguins

#LoveWins

Penguin Beach is home to the Zoo's most famous same-sex couple, Ronnie and Reggie, and our #penguins are joining in on the #Pride celebrations! 🐧 Discover more about our pride-themed activities at the Zoo! 🏳️‍🌈 https://t.co/G62kM4oKGA #PrideInLondon @PrideInLondon #ZooLife pic.twitter.com/uIWSb7Ah5F

— ZSL London Zoo (@zsllondonzoo) June 26, 2019

The Hill:

The ZSL London Zoo announced it will host a Pride celebration next weekend for its same-sex penguin couples.

The zoo said in a release that its colony of 93 Humboldt penguins, which includes three same-sex couples, will all take part in the Pride festivities next Friday.

The zoo also specifically pointed out that its “most famous gay residents,” Ronnie and Reggie, are still together and will be involved the celebration as well. Ronnie and Reggie, who have been together since 2014, captured headlines a few years back after they adopted a chick that had been abandoned by another couple.

“They remain as strong as ever and are often found snuggled up in their nest box together,” the zoo said.

Pride Month is a zeitgeist-warping journey through social media here at the end of the second decade of the 21st century.

On the one hand, we are told that the community being celebrated with an entire month of its own is having its “very right to exist” constantly threatened.

On the other hand, penguin Pride parties.

If I am ever trying to convey the gravity of a situation I don’t involve penguins. But that’s just me.

Social and conventional media are absolutely inundated with pro-Pride images and messages every June. I am not passing judgment on that one way or another, I am merely saying that I am an avid personal and professional consumer of both and that I don’t get an “endangered, marginalized group” vibe during the month of June. In fact, if one were to awake from a decades-long coma this month, they may think that most of society was now LGBTQ.

I am not at all saying that members of the LGBTQ community don’t face struggles.

I am saying that this isn’t 1958.

The penguins at the London Zoo probably agree with me.