Lindsey Weedston
Writer and Revue Cinema’s Dumpster Raccoon Film Series Anthony Oliveira recently made an interesting observation on Twitter in a thread that has now gone viral. He noticed that in nearly every depiction of Noah’s Ark for children, the lions are indisputably gay.
If you’re not familiar, Noah’s Ark is the story of a guy who built a boat after God told him to because he was about to kill the entire world with a massive flood. So Noah built a huge ark and filled it with a breeding pair of every animal on Earth so that they could survive along with humans. However, many depictions of this ark include two lions with full manes. Lions with manes are, of course, male.
the error is...systemic to the genre it seems pic.twitter.com/DOsvp3E4Rr
— Anthony Oliveira (@meakoopa) June 11, 2019
Oliveira found several works of art clearly made for children that makes this amusing error, which gets funnier every time Christians are homophobic.
these lions are in fact visually distinct, but i think the male is still gay.... pic.twitter.com/JtobOIqxIn
— Anthony Oliveira (@meakoopa) June 11, 2019
He did find one which seemed to attempt to avoid this gay lion trope, but what may have supposed to have been a female lion looks a little more like a tiger, which brings up additional problems.
this one feels like an overcorrection pic.twitter.com/6hQtBin48p
— Anthony Oliveira (@meakoopa) June 11, 2019
He even found a Rennaisance painting that might depict gay lions, if those are indeed supposed to be lions. Rennaisance art is weird. Also, what happened to those unicorns? Did someone forget to feed them, or were they actually a gay pair who couldn’t reproduce? Please explain.
it's even a problem in renaissance art, except we have the usual..............is-that-a-lion problems endemic to the period https://t.co/JWJXedZsox pic.twitter.com/Gm70SnmYph
— Anthony Oliveira (@meakoopa) June 11, 2019
Oliveira ends his thread by declaring the entire classic story of Noah’s Ark to be “queer as heck,” and he’s definitely right.
lesbian cows, gay lions, masc-presenting peacock pairs, and herds of unicorns - i think what we've learned is that when Christians whine that we "stole the rainbow" from them, we should remind them that their art of the Noah story has always been queer as heck
— Anthony Oliveira (@meakoopa) June 11, 2019
Happy #Pride! pic.twitter.com/w4loFZ61ds
If the thread itself wasn’t amazing enough for you, people on Twitter have been chiming in with their own gay lion jokes.
Of course the lions are gay. That's why a group of lions is called a pride.
— chief_tonka (@bella_italia_j) June 11, 2019
yada yada yada trans-atlantic voyage pun yada yada yada
— Stephanie ☀️???????? (@Nergsies) June 12, 2019
Gay lions are the new pride icons. https://t.co/QAsXsGic89
— linds ????️???? (@lindsaybits) June 13, 2019
Please read this thread. I think Siegfried and Roy actually adopted all the lions and tigers from the arc lmao https://t.co/QvKSeeIOWY
— Meg ∞ Veg (@megveg) June 13, 2019
I was in Vegas at the White Lion exhibit for Sigfried & Roy. A big male lion mounted another male lion and went to town on him. All this southern tourist beside me could say was ‘I didn’t know lady lions could have manes’. Ha ha maybe that dude was one of the illustrators.
— WhiskeyDental (@WhiskeyDental) June 12, 2019
May I point out, that there can also be maned lionesses. So.
— Jade Ottsel (@Jade_Gryphon) June 12, 2019
...they might be two FEMALE lions as well! 😀
???? Lean on my #pride
— P. The-Blight-of-Mankind Coveswina???? (@enthusiasm85) June 12, 2019
Lean on my #PRIDE
I'm a (gay) lion ???? https://t.co/kF7BgvgwUx
Gotta love gay lions secretly infiltrating Christian children's books https://t.co/dzHOt8ECal
— Justin ???????? (@jdberg_artist) June 13, 2019
The first gay animals on earth were the lions on Noah’s ark https://t.co/ccpWcq8mtY
— ✧･ﾟ: * ???????????????????? *:･ﾟ✧ (@etherealemiIy) June 13, 2019
????Rawwwrrr... pic.twitter.com/8h5z7G3NwD
— Ian Batt ????????♂️ (@IanBatt2) June 12, 2019
Other people have additional questions and comments about the story of Noah’s ark, including but not limited to the choice of animals brought on board.
I still can’t believe Noah put 2 roaches, 2 fleas, 2 bedbugs, 2 rats, etc. on that damn boat https://t.co/x0g9PrUDnb
— r kelly must die (@__BackToBlack) June 12, 2019
Speaking as a childcare professional, there is nobody who loves anything more than kids love narratives where large numbers of characters are flippantly killed off.
— emmet l.f. cameron (@emlfc) June 11, 2019
Am I the only one that notices it’s 2 female elephants, too. It’s always same sex elephants and lions. https://t.co/LU8T1ZxZtx
— A Zed 5 (@4iamstardust) June 12, 2019
nothing primes a child for accepting a god that punishes you infinitely for a single lifetime of alleged sin like framing worldwide extinction as fair because he allowed some people and some animals to live https://t.co/aFXRAWwtPP
— tubby goddamned manlet furry (@usb_dongle) June 12, 2019
Question, how was it climate controlled? Two of EVERY animal right? 2 polar bears + 2 iguanas + 2 moles + 2 sloths +
— Michelle Enelen (@falln468) June 12, 2019
2 many maggots, unless they miraculously didn't defecate. #gaylionpride https://t.co/yY8dxJtE82
I really like how even though the fish are in the water, there are still 2 of each one
— ???? Lucretiel (@Lucretiel) June 11, 2019
Why does nobody show the 900,000 species of insects? ????
— Win 3️⃣ for KD ???????? (@TzarHeart) June 12, 2019
Oh no what happened to the other dolphin
— Unwedded Gay Rat????️???? (@Pullingaclaudia) June 11, 2019
Instilling a key tenet of Western ethical thinking at an early age: deaths of unnamed characters don't really count.
— Last year's thing (@humbleetc) June 12, 2019
All the people on earth died because they deserved it. Except the one good family, who were good because they were a member of that family. Definitely an alarming moral there
— mcc (@mcclure111) June 13, 2019
This is why Biblical literalism gets so weird. But if you insist, happy Pride!