Gay Penguins
This is just silly.
According to The Telegraph, a zoo in Germany began a campaign to mate six of their male penguins with some Swedish female penguins, to “help save a threatened species” (according to the zoo's director). So far, it sounds like the kind of things zoos do.
However, the zoo was “inundated with criticism by the gay lobby after making public [their] plan.” Why?
Because these male penguins are homosexuals, and we shouldn't try and ‘cure’ them of their homosexuality.
Apparently, the Humboldt penguin is “a bird whose homosexual tendencies are well known to zoologists”. These six penguins seem to have paired off, trying to mate with each other and gathering rocks which they covered and sat on (as if they were eggs) making their keepers think they were boy and girl couples.
A subsequent article in The Age reported that the zoo had abandoned their breeding plan due to the harrassment they received. Now they're getting some heterosexual male penguins to breed with the Swedish females they have.
The thing is, if we are going to force human moral standards upon animals (i.e. to not make them mate with females if they don't want to—as if you can do that anyway!), should we be out there trying to save the male praying mantis who gets eaten by the female they've just mated with, so as to prevent their murder? Come to think of it, there are a lot of animals out there that should be behind bars for stealing, murdering, raping, etc.
Or perhaps we only endorse those behaviours that line up with a moral position we have chosen not because of biology, but on completely different grounds.
Sources: Article from The Telegraph on 14 February 2005 (registration required to view article at no cost), and a subsequent article in The Age on 17 February 2005 (registration required and then cost of $2.20 for the article).