Daily Mail: 'Penguins will make kids gay'

Melanie Phillips, writing in today's Daily Mail, has shared with the world her fears that a gay conspiracy is trying to take over the world. And it's got something to do with penguins:

"Mad as this may seem [you said it!], schoolchildren are to be bombarded with homosexual references... In science, they will be directed to ­animal species such as emperor ­penguins and sea horses, where the male takes a lead role in raising its young."

So fathers who bring up their children are gay? Who knew...

From that moment on it is seems Phillips may simply be losing the plot. But rather than send her copy back to her with the number of a good psychiatrist attached - or at least the suggestion she take a few days off - her editors have allowed the whole car crash to play out spectacularly on their pages:

"Alas, this gay curriculum is no laughing matter."

Sorry, do continue...

"Absurd as it sounds [You said it...again!], this is but the latest attempt to brainwash children with propaganda... It is an abuse of childhood. And it's all part of the ruthless campaign by the gay rights lobby to destroy the very ­concept of normal sexual behaviour."

...such as sex between a male and a female penguin which still should not be mentioned in the classroom because the male then keeps the resulting egg warm until it hatches, the godless abomination. (That said, there have been a lot more penguins on TV over the past few years. And that dancing one in Happy Feet was definitely gay. So maybe Phillips could be onto something here).

"As the old joke has it, what was once impermissible first becomes tolerated and then becomes mandatory."

Ah, the old jokes are still the best...

Actually, I don't get it. Phillips appears to be suggesting that if we're not careful schoolchildren will actually be forced to have gay sex, but that's not funny, that's just crazy.

She follows this non-sequitor with, some may say ironically, a point about wronged Catholics:

"Catholic adoption agencies were forced to shut down after they refused to place ­children with same-sex couples. Marriage registrars were forced to step down for refusing to officiate at civil unions... Penalising religious people for speaking and acting in accordance with their beliefs is neither liberal nor tolerant. It is behaviour more commonly associated with totalitarian dictatorships."

Because the Daily Mail would never penalise people for speaking and acting in accordance with their religious beliefs. Unless they were Muslim of course.

I could go on. Almost every line of Phillips' article includes a ludicrous non-sequitor, a selective choice of supporting arguments, an unsourced or ubstantiated claim or a piece of wild speculation and scaremongering dressed up as fact. But I fear if our minds really are so impressionable that watching a penguin hatch an egg could turn a child gay, then staring at Phillips' words for any longer than I already have could turn me into a hateful and narrow minded individual.

Comments

[Szwagier]

I raise my kids whenever they're staying with me. Does that make me temporarily gay, periodically gay, or what.

Both my kids are boys, but as I'm not a Catholic priest I haven't been tempted to fondle them yet...

If I do start, does that make me a gay Catholic? Then what happens?

[Kieran Miles]

Join this page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sack-Melanie-Phillips-for-Discriminatory-LGBT-Remarks/159024967481757?v=wall) and sign the petition (http://www.gopetition.com/petition/42284.html) I made to sack Melanie Phillips for discrimination. Additionally, make a complaint to the PCC http://www.pcc.org.uk/complaints/form.html.

[RedHeadFashionista]

I would argue that it's far more an abuse of childhood to allow them to go through their youth thinking that gay men (and lesbian women, whom I note she leaves absent) are as mythical Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy.

[James]

I'll occasionally give the wife a break and look after our daughter single-handedly while she has some time to herself, maybe for a quick nap or a soak in the bath. Should I alert any particular authorities that I'll probably be gaying it up between around 7 and 8pm tonight?

[JulieB]

That's the last time I'm taking my kids to the penguin enclosure at the zoo!
Words fail me.

[Taco Day]

My father raised us as a single-father after our skank mother abandoned us into foster care while he was out-of-town at work. The State of Missouri took 3 years to return us to him because "It was unnatural for a man to raise children." For 3 YEARS, we lived in HELL and suffered multiple, permanent injuries because some RELIGIOUS nut job was in charge of "who raises children best." I'm deaf in an ear, blind in an eye, suffered a fractured disc and had to work out a speech impediment all from a blow to the head in foster care (1970-1973). Thanks to all those FREAKS who think a Father can't raise his children! Melanie Phillips, you hateful crone, you can kiss my buttocks!