March of the Sheeple

It is often said that perceiving the difference between parody and reality within the subjects of fundamentalist religion and creationism is nearly impossible. Some of the radical right have apparently taken to the story illustrated in March of the Penguins – the Best Almost Documentary of the Year but at Least it's French – as an illustration of God's Great Republican Family Value Plan(tm). Jebus they must be kidding themselves.

Penguins practice what we would call, among humans, serial monogamy – breeding (or in our case fucking, unless you're Christian, then I guess it's just straightforward breeding, sans the fun stuff). They pair up, but only for that season. Therefore, they aren't monogamous in the Dobsonian sense, and that kinda wrecks the whole fundamentalist argument against divorce and such, which basically translates into "stand by your man who beats you every weekend, cause his beatings are less severe than what Gawd gon' ta give ya' on Judgment Day if you break the vow." Were the fundamentalists a little more careful, they could have picked macaws, which do tend to mate for life. But then macaws raise a number of questions that require Darwinian theory to explain. Penguins do too, of course, but the producers of March of the Penguins somehow missed the crux of the story (to be fair, it's still a damn good movie).

Biologists are quick to point out on matters like this that "ought cannot be derived from is." Conservative Christians and creationists, on the other hand, hand-pick evidence to prove an invalid point while ignoring the full body of evidence. It would be just as easy to take the penguin's narrative to say, hey, that God fella is a really sadistic motherfucker, what with giving them fat penguins short little legs unsuitable for so much walking, and putting them on a frozen continent where their precious eggs will die almost immediately if they roll out from under their parent bird. Why does Jebus hate birds!?!?!?

And as for the Republican Family Values argument, re: evidence, the teen birthrate is roughly half what it was in the Perfect Happy Days of 1957. Tell a Moral Majority type person that, and the best response you get is, "Is NOT, is NOT!" Facts? What the hell are those?