Writer makes hilarious observation about the lions on Noah's ark: 'Whoops! Gay lions'

A Canadian writer left the internet cackling a few years ago when he shared an interesting little detail he'd noticed in most depictions of Noah's Ark. In a now-viral Twitter thread, Anthony Oliveira—a "National Magazine, Reads Rainbow, and GLAAD award-winning author, film programmer, pop culture critic, and Ph.D. living in Toronto"—pointed out how several works of art depicting the biblical tale seemed to have a little gay representation. For those who aren't familiar with the Genesis flood narrative, Noah's Arc follows the tale of a guy—named Noah—who built a boat as per God's orders after he was told the entire world was to be washed off in a massive flood.

Noah is also tasked with the assignment of filling the arc with male and female specimens of all the world's species of animals, so that they may reproduce and multiply in the post-flood world. While most depictions of Noah's arc carrying pairs of different species get it right for elephants, chickens, zebras, cows, giraffes, goats, ducks, fish, etc, they almost always seemed to deviate from the requirements when it came to lions. Instead of featuring a lion and a lioness, Oliveria noticed, many paintings showed off two lions with full manes, which are, of course, male.

Take a closer look at this one, for example:

And this:

There's more:

Whoops!

Oliveria also found one that seemed to have attempted to avoid this gay lion trope but took the overcorrection a bit too far so that what may have been supposed to be a female lion looks a little more like a tiger. This, of course, raises a whole range of other questions.

Oliveira ends his thread by declaring the entire tale of Noah's Arc the epitome of queerness. "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," he wrote. By calling attention to the subtle but meaningful details of the artworks, Oliveira ignited a storm of questions and comments about the tale. Here are some of our favorite Twitter reactions to the thread: