The sitcom Parks & Recreation stars SNL alum Amy Poehler and debuted on NBC's Thursday schedule in the spring of 2009. For the first episode of its second season, Poehler's character, parks commissioner Leslie Knope, married two penguins, Tux and Flipper, at the Pawnee (Indiana) Zoo - unaware that both were male. Hilarity and inanity ensued.
This innocent publicity stunt incensed the local "family values" organization but Leslie refused their demand that she anul the marriage. This made her a hero of Pawnee's gay community, including co-worker April's gay boyfriend and his boyfriend, and they honored her at the local gay bar, the Bulge (where one of the songs played was Lady Gaga's Poker Face). As a further tribute they created a knock-off version of the famous Obama poster replacing the word "Hope" with "Knope". The next day she commented how she liked being the "queen of the gays".
However, to defuse the situation in town Leslie finally arranged to send Tux and Flipper to a zoo in Iowa because, as Leslie noted, same-sex marriage is legal there.
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