Every family has at least one stray sheep contentedly nibbling forbidden pasture under the shade of an old worm-apple tree. Our's was my 80-year-old aunt Tootsie.
She had a habit of muttering in her cups, "Sail off into the wind, sailor!" when she had one too many. (Martinis, not sailors.)
Whether that was a fair-weather sign-on or a gale warning turn-off was never quite determined at our infrequent family get-togethers when Aunt Tootsie was present. (It did, however, spark my early interest in nautical maneuvers and dinghies.)
Speaking of sheep: A recent scientific study says that 6 to 8 percent of rams are totally gay or, if you prefer, "pink sheep." These same-sex woolies (not to be confused with football bun-slapping muttonheads) have a different brain structuring than straight-shagging bovine counterparts.
These findings parallel studies that show brain area differences between homos and heteros. The study, seemingly anatomically sound, was questioned because samples were taken from terminal AIDS patients. It's argued that medications might have caused minute cellular differences to occur.
While we gay woolies find same-sex rutting to be of clinical interest – that's what X-tube's really all about – our non-gay, biblical woolites are obsessed with these ramifications in animal husbandry. (Being washed in the Blood of the Lamb is a little too close for their laundromating comfort.)
Holy Household Pets (H2P, for short), a family values organization located in Topelulu, Miss., wants so-called "pink sheep" rams to be corralled in ex-gay prayer pens for reparative therapy, Bible verse counseling, fleece back combing, short horn retwisting. (And, if all else fails, strictly kosher neutering.)
H2P president Rev. Mark-Luke Armageddon expresses grave concern about the "scientific" data. "I'm convinced it's a Satanic plot. it's enough that we've made scapegoats out of gays and lesbians, now we've got these damnable four-legged sexual considerations to deal with.
"You can be certain that when sheep – ewes, rams, lambkins – and for that matter pigs, cows, does, horses, dogs, cats and wombats – came off Noah's Ark, they were all straight (and really ready to multiply. But not fruitfully)."
H2P gets frantic e-mail from parents who are wondering about their own impressionable kids. "What do I tell my Tommy about counting his bedtime sheep?" asks one concerned daddy. "What if just one sheep is, you know, a 'pinko'? Do they jump fences differently?
"And what's this business about 'one for the master, one for the dame, one for the little boy who lived down the lane?' Are they into some kinda kiddy kink? Yes sir! Yes sir! Three bags full! It's scary."
A panicked mom in Palin County, Alaska, frets, "What if my Nora asks about Mary's Little Lamb? Is that Mary as in gay, by the way? Do tainted lambs follow children to kindergarten? Would it help to home school my kids, or my kids' kids, or their kids' kids. Help! I'm not kidding."
"We advise parents not to take kids under 12 to farms where the gay rams are grazing," said Rev. Armageddon, at a sheep shearing fundraiser. "It's bleatingly bad form that zoo chimps openly diddle in public. Now this. We don't approve of same-sex animal husbandry in any form!"
Predictably, gay activists are alarmed at these blatant instances of kidophobia. "Why can't these H2P-ers just let these herbivores munch grass and mount each other in peace? Truth is, some animals have little hornies. Some animals have big hornies. Who gives a rat's winkie, anyway?"
"If you can't cuddle up to a sheep – straight or gay, bi or transgendered – for heaven's sake butt out. That should be everybody's bottom line. No bull about it!"
