The what now?
Oct. 15th, 2004 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forsythSo... Apparently, Dick Cheney and his wife are angry that John Kerry mentioned their daughter was a lesbian in the debate the other night. And a bunch of Republicans and some news people are spinning up outrage about it. "Low blow" "invasion of privacy" and my favorite, by Mrs. Cheney, "cheap and tawdry" have been used to decry the reference. Um. Sure.
Okay, firstly, she's openly gay. It's been public knowledge since at LEAST 2000, if not longer. Her old job was the Gay and Lesbian outreach at Coors. And you can't say she's not involved in the campaign, since she's working on her dad's campaign ( http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/bush/bushorg.html ). On gay outreach, IIRC. So she's certainly not an uninvolved private figure by any means. Secondly, let's see what was actually said, shall we?
Debate Transcript: (from here: http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004d.html )
"SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, let's get back to economic issues. But let's shift to some other questions here.
Both of you are opposed to gay marriage. But to understand how you have come to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?"
[Bush's reply edited since it's not really relevant]
"KERRY: We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.
I think if you talk to anybody, it's not choice. I've met people who struggled with this for years, people who were in a marriage because they were living a sort of convention, and they struggled with it.
And I've met wives who are supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally sort of broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them.
I think we have to respect that.
The president and I share the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. I believe that. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.
But I also believe that because we are the United States of America, we're a country with a great, unbelievable Constitution, with rights that we afford people, that you can't discriminate in the workplace. You can't discriminate in the rights that you afford people.
You can't disallow someone the right to visit their partner in a hospital. You have to allow people to transfer property, which is why I'm for partnership rights and so forth.
Now, with respect to DOMA and the marriage laws, the states have always been able to manage those laws. And they're proving today, every state, that they can manage them adequately."
Now, if you can see an attack there, you're more paranoid than me. Nothing about that is attacking Cheney, or his daughter, at all. What it does do, from James Wolcott, "I think what Kerry did was quite ingenious and useful: he deflected any future attempt to paint Democrats as the party of heathen sodomites by pointing out that the vice president's daughter is lesbian, the vice president and his wife love their daughter, sexual preference crosses political lines, so take this cultural wedge issue and stick it where it ouches--and got this across in such a caring, sharing way."
So, yeah. She's in PUBLIC POLITICAL LIFE, she's specifically involved in the campaign, she's not hiding the fact she's a lesbian, so...naming the fact that she's a lesbian is a bad thing and an attack how? Are people really going to go "OHNOS! Mary Cheney is teh gay!!!!11!!! I'm going to go vote for Kerry now!" No. Is it a sensitive subject? Well, yeah, but just because some people are bigoted idiots and one of the candidates is playing for their votes doesn't mean the topic shouldn't be discussed at all.
Oh yes. Not to mention Cheney admitted on the campaign that his daughter is a lesbian
And to finish, a quote from Andrew Sullivan who's a conservative gay blogger...
"Some of the subtler arguments I've heard overnight say the following: it's not that homosexuality is wrong; it's just that many people believe that and Kerry therefore exploited their homophobia to gain a point. I don't buy it, but let's assume the worst in Kerry's motives for the sake of argument. What these emailers are saying is that Kerry should hedge what he says in order to cater to the homophobia of Bush's base. Why on earth should he? The truth here is obvious: Bush and Cheney are closet tolerants. They have no problem with gay people personally; but they use hostility to gay people for political purposes, even if it means attacking members of their own families. What they are currently objecting to is the fact that their hypocrisy has been exposed. To which the only answer is: if you don't want to be exposed as a hypocrite, don't be one."
Okay, firstly, she's openly gay. It's been public knowledge since at LEAST 2000, if not longer. Her old job was the Gay and Lesbian outreach at Coors. And you can't say she's not involved in the campaign, since she's working on her dad's campaign ( http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/bush/bushorg.html ). On gay outreach, IIRC. So she's certainly not an uninvolved private figure by any means. Secondly, let's see what was actually said, shall we?
Debate Transcript: (from here: http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004d.html )
"SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, let's get back to economic issues. But let's shift to some other questions here.
Both of you are opposed to gay marriage. But to understand how you have come to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?"
[Bush's reply edited since it's not really relevant]
"KERRY: We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.
I think if you talk to anybody, it's not choice. I've met people who struggled with this for years, people who were in a marriage because they were living a sort of convention, and they struggled with it.
And I've met wives who are supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally sort of broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them.
I think we have to respect that.
The president and I share the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. I believe that. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.
But I also believe that because we are the United States of America, we're a country with a great, unbelievable Constitution, with rights that we afford people, that you can't discriminate in the workplace. You can't discriminate in the rights that you afford people.
You can't disallow someone the right to visit their partner in a hospital. You have to allow people to transfer property, which is why I'm for partnership rights and so forth.
Now, with respect to DOMA and the marriage laws, the states have always been able to manage those laws. And they're proving today, every state, that they can manage them adequately."
Now, if you can see an attack there, you're more paranoid than me. Nothing about that is attacking Cheney, or his daughter, at all. What it does do, from James Wolcott, "I think what Kerry did was quite ingenious and useful: he deflected any future attempt to paint Democrats as the party of heathen sodomites by pointing out that the vice president's daughter is lesbian, the vice president and his wife love their daughter, sexual preference crosses political lines, so take this cultural wedge issue and stick it where it ouches--and got this across in such a caring, sharing way."
So, yeah. She's in PUBLIC POLITICAL LIFE, she's specifically involved in the campaign, she's not hiding the fact she's a lesbian, so...naming the fact that she's a lesbian is a bad thing and an attack how? Are people really going to go "OHNOS! Mary Cheney is teh gay!!!!11!!! I'm going to go vote for Kerry now!" No. Is it a sensitive subject? Well, yeah, but just because some people are bigoted idiots and one of the candidates is playing for their votes doesn't mean the topic shouldn't be discussed at all.
Oh yes. Not to mention Cheney admitted on the campaign that his daughter is a lesbian
And to finish, a quote from Andrew Sullivan who's a conservative gay blogger...
"Some of the subtler arguments I've heard overnight say the following: it's not that homosexuality is wrong; it's just that many people believe that and Kerry therefore exploited their homophobia to gain a point. I don't buy it, but let's assume the worst in Kerry's motives for the sake of argument. What these emailers are saying is that Kerry should hedge what he says in order to cater to the homophobia of Bush's base. Why on earth should he? The truth here is obvious: Bush and Cheney are closet tolerants. They have no problem with gay people personally; but they use hostility to gay people for political purposes, even if it means attacking members of their own families. What they are currently objecting to is the fact that their hypocrisy has been exposed. To which the only answer is: if you don't want to be exposed as a hypocrite, don't be one."
