- Leslie: You know why tonight is so much fun? Because everyone's so gay. And they know how to have fun, and the dancing... everyone is just who they are and who they are is just stone cold gay.
Ron comes into Leslie's office to tell her, "Here's the situation...", prompting her to go into a full rendition of the rap song "Parents Just Don't Understand". Afterward, he tells her someone is on fire at a park and needs immediate assistance. Later, Leslie performs a wedding ceremony for two penguins just recently acquired by the Pawnee zoo to generate publicity. Immediately after the ceremony, the two penguins begin having sex in front of a crowd of children, who realize both penguins are actually males. Leslie receives a cake and T-shirts from The Bulge, a local gay bar, thanking her for supporting their cause. In addition, April's gay boyfriends Ben and Derek are thrilled with Leslie's actions and invite her to a party the next night at The Bulge as the guest of honor.
Leslie is concerned that she appears to have taken a political stand, something most government workers try to avoid. Not helping is when Marcia Langman from the Society for Family Stability Foundation confronts Leslie, calling for Leslie to not only annul the penguin marriage but also resign.
Mark, after having fallen into the pit and hit his head, has reevaluated his life. Ann took care of him while he was in recovery, and she thinks he became a nicer person after hitting his head. Mark asks Ann out, but she says no, fearing it would be weird for Leslie. She tells Leslie about it, and Leslie appreciates that Ann won't go out with Mark for her sake. Despite having shared a kiss before Mark fell, Mark and Leslie both insist they are just friends.
At The Bulge, Leslie tells Tom that they will not take a stand. However, she is given free drinks and so much applause that she declares herself an advocate for the gay cause. Next morning, Ron confronts her with the information that she must appear on Pawnee Today to defend herself against Marcia Langman's calls for her resignation. On the show, Leslie is verbally attacked by both Marcia Langman and Pawnee Today host Joan Callamezzo. Callers to the show also call for Leslie's resignation. Leslie refuses to annul the marriage or resign and apologizes for "having fun". She later visits Ann and tells her she should go out with Mark, or at least she shouldn't refuse to date him because of Leslie.
Andy, dressed in a nice suit, has come back to Pawnee and visits Ann. He tells her he has an office job and apologizes for his previous behavior and he wants to give things another shot. When she turns down his offer to get back together, he accepts and leaves. Outside, he heads straight for the pit, where he has pitched a tent so he can keep tabs on Ann.
Ultimately, rather than give into the demands, Leslie decides to transfer the penguin husbands to a zoo in Iowa, where gay marriage is legal, solving her problem.
Tropes
- Accidental Hero: Leslie becomes an icon of the gay community when she marries two male penguins, being that she didn't even know they were both males.
- Amicable Exes: Played for laughs in Leslie and Mark's case.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Marcia Langman is a shrewd, humorless and uptight moral guardian that wants Leslie to resign for marrying those two male penguins. Joan Callamezzo as well.
- Blatant Lies: Marcia states she doesn't want to be unreasonable; she just wants Leslie to annul the marriage of the penguins, repay the value to the contributors and then resign.
- The Bus Came Back: Played with. Ann states that Andy went away to hike mountains, so he was Put on a Bus in-universe, but he came back and started living in the Lot 48 pit.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Marcia Langman from the Society for Family Stability Foundation calls for Leslie to resign because Leslie staged a penguin marriage as a publicity stunt for the zoo and the penguins turned out to both be male.
- Establishing Character Moment: Marcia Langman is shown quickly to be a satire of a fundamentalist Christian Moral Guardian in her very first appearance, even stating how gays marrying ruins marriage for everybody else.
- The Fundamentalist: Marcia is an uptight and ultra-religious conservative that gets offended by anything she deems improper.
- The Generation Gap: Parodied. After seeing April's relationship with her two gay boyfriends, Leslie remarks that she does not understand youth culture.
- Heteronormative Crusader: Marcia is adamantly against gay marriage because it "ruins marriage for the rest of us".
- Hope Bringer: Leslie for the Pawnee gay community, by accident.
- Literal Metaphor: Mark talks about how he hit rock bottom when he fell into the pit, in that he literally hit his head on a rock at the bottom of the pit.
- Moral Guardian: The whole point of Marcia's character, who becomes a recurring antagonist to Leslie's freedom of speech.
- The Mountains of Illinois: Andy left to "climb mountains in Kansas", so as a result Ann has no idea where he went. He's actually lying and was living in the pit all this time.
- Polyamory: April's "relationship" with her two gay boyfriends Ben and Derek.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Played with, as Tom wears pink and Leslie points out she knows he isn't gay, but he is effeminate.
- Ship Tease: Between Ann and Mark.
- Shipper on Deck: Leslie for Mark/Ann. Ann initially refuses to go out with Mark because she fears it'll be weird for Leslie, but Leslie has gotten over Mark and gives them her blessing.
- Stalker with a Crush: Andy for Ann.
- Take a Third Option: Rather than let Marcia Langman get her way, Leslie decides to take the two penguin husbands over to a zoo in another state where gay marriage is legal.
- Unfortunate Implications: In universe, Leslie marrying two penguins is seen as a political act, something that she lampshades constantly, stating that she did it just because it was cute (plus, to reiterate once again, no one knew both penguins were male).
- Where Everybody Knows Your Flame: The Bulge, the gay bar of Pawnee. Well, everybody except Leslie knew, anyway.
- Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: Nobody knew both penguins were male until a zookeeper points it out.
