Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter Mary has announced that she is pregnant and expecting a child in the spring. (I am enjoying the timely irony that the media is focusing on the announcement of a fatherless pregnancy of a woman named Mary, which has thrown Christian conservatives into a tizzy.)
Cheney, 37, lives with her partner, Heather Poe, in Virginia, a state with some of the most radical anti-gay laws. As Family Pride Executive Director Jennifer Chisler put it, "Heather will never be able to have a legal relationship with her child."
"Unconscionable!" exclaims Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America. "It's very disappointing that a celebrity couple like this would deliberately bring into the world a child that will never have a father."
Never mind the millions of heterosexuals who through irresponsibility unintentionally bring children into single-parent households. Never mind that Mary's father pushed for a war that has created thousands upon thousands of orphans, both in Iraq and here in America. Never mind that nearly half of all heterosexual marriages end in divorce.
Speaking on behalf of James Dobson's organization Focus on the Family, Carrie Gordon Earll explains, "Love can't replace a mother and a father."
To Earll, the gender of the parents is more important than love or their desire or ability to care for a child.
We don't need to go very far to find opposite-sex couples, married or not, who are absolutely lousy parents. Just open the newspaper or turn on any afternoon talkshow. Instead, we have a committed couple of 15 years (the average duration of a heterosexual marriage is 11 years) who have gone to presumably extraordinary lengths to have a biological child; they have demonstrated their commitment to each other through the test of time and the conscious decision to have a family, and yet in the eyes of the conservatives, this pair does not deserve the same legal privileges and protections as -- sorry to drag her into this again, but she's a classic example -- Britney Spears, whose second marriage of two years and two children ended in a divorce (by text message) which had only just barely left the headlines before she (and her vagina) was photographed out and about on the late-night party circuit.
*****
In other good gay news today, Conservative Judaism has approved a legal opinion allowing for the ordination of gay rabbis and the celebration of same-sex (but not interfaith) relationships. The new understanding allows synagogues to follow their own collective consciences and understandings of scripture to prayerfully reach correct and meaningful decisions. The implications, however, that members of the top centrist body of Judaism have found that homosexual ordination and relationships can be "justified according to Jewish law" are enormous.
(I tried to find this opinion on line, but I guess it is not publicly available yet. If anyone knows where I can get it, I would really be interested in reading it.)
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7 comments:
As I watch my sister, who only procreated to "save" her marraige, drag her two boys through a second divorce I have to say AMEN to this. Earll should spend her time helping the idiot heterosexuals who can't keep their legs closed and leave the committed couples alone.
mary cheney is not a celebrity, nor a public person.
i think the media should just leave her alone.
those pursuing an agenda, the same ones who want to defend the private life, and decisions, of gays are playing a double standard here.
gay people are people.
dont treat them as public props for your causes.
Mary Cheney would have the right to privacy of an ordinary citizen if she didn't venture into the spotlight whenever convenient for her and her family. If you've been a GLBT liaison for a major company, and have then gone on to work for a campaign which made opposition to gay marriage a cornerstone of its platform, you can't reasonably expect your pregnancy out of legal wedlock to not be found newsworthy. She cries foul now just because she knows idiots like Gino are willing to play the gay-bashing card on her behalf.
Cheney is, at any rate, not a lesbian. How can she be? She is rich. Rich people don't have to be gay. People who hate gays are demonstrably willing to overlook cocksucking and muffdiving in people of money and influence. She has no reason to care about gay issues because they simply don't affect her. In Jim Crow America she would be a mulatto passing for white; in Nazi Germany she would be an assimilated Jew who thought Hitler made a lot of sense.
As long as someone else is paying, no price is too high. That's the Republican philosophy.
Your right to "privacy" does not mean you have the right to be anonymous and disappear into society; it means, in this instance, there are areas of your life over which the government should have zero or very little control; issues of physical intimacy, relationships and reproductive choices definitely fall under the issues of privacy. No one has any right to interfere here. However, she is indeed a public person (I would hardly say celebrity, but, whatever), and Mike is absolutely right about why. While I'm thrilled for her and her partner and wish her every happiness, I kind of have to say, this is the political karma you get when you willingly jump into bed with extremists in order to get elected.
What galls me is that here you have a couple that has done EVERYTHING right: they are committed, they are educated, they are employed, they've been together for a long time, and they've chosen to start a family. Hell, they're even Republican! But for people like Focus on the Family and Concerned Women for America, the absolute WORST POSSIBLE heterosexual parent is still, simply by nature of sexual orientation, preferable to anything a committed same-sex couple could offer a child.
gay bashing card?
sorry, i dont have that one in my deck.
i'm saying leave her alone.
if she wasnt a GOP daughter, you'd be singing her praises.
this may suprise you: many gays are conservative limited govt types of thinkers, and naturally would gravitate toward the GOP.
i have known a good 1/2 gay men who where strong supporters of ronald reagan, and my lesbian sister has recently changed her registration to the GOP. her former partner was hardcore for the GOP. niether of these two ladies support same sex marriage either, but prefer a civil union as more appropriate.
you see, or maybe you are hate blinded, not every member of a political party thinks the same way on all issues. parties are, by nature, not monoliths, but collections of differring viewpoints who think they have more to gain by working together on the issues they share.
i was once a political operative. i worked with everybody who wanted to be a part of the bigger picture, tolerating differences in order to win on issues we shared. everybody in the 'tent' gets a seat at the table, and chance to influence the policy outcome.
you seem to be practicing the same kind of racism that says a black man can only be democrat.
as for calling me names, like 'stupid'. just how intelligent do you think a remark like this makes you look?
"Cheney is, at any rate, not a lesbian. How can she be? She is rich. Rich people don't have to be gay. People who hate gays are demonstrably willing to overlook cocksucking and muffdiving in people of money and influence. She has no reason to care about gay issues because they simply don't affect her. In Jim Crow America she would be a mulatto passing for white; in Nazi Germany she would be an assimilated Jew who thought Hitler made a lot of sense.
"
Crazy question. Who's really working to keep Ms. Cheney's private life in the spotlight? After all, beyond the birth announcement and coverage should she and her lover choose to pursue the right to have both of them recognized as legal parents of the child, this matter would be quickly over.
But then conservative groups like Focus on the family and Concerned Women for America decided they needed to speak out against these women's choices. They decided to decry them as terrible parents and make them the next prop in their tirade against how gay people are supposedly ruining our society.
solid point,jarred.
FotF and CWA should just stay out it as well...
i'm sure she talked it over with her parents before she did this, knowing there would be be a level of 'media' about it.
and i think if it meant THAT much to her, she could always move to a freindlier state. it appears to me VA's restrictions are not all that restrictive for her.
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