The “insult” to Mary Cheney

Have the Republicans gone mad? At the vice presidential debate, Edwards made some oleaginous comment about Cheney’s lesbian daughter, and Cheney thanked him. I repeat: Cheney thanked him. At the third president debate a week or so later, Kerry, following Edwards’s lead, and perhaps thinking that he also would be thanked for it, made a similar oleaginous comment about Cheney’s lesbian daughter, and the roof falls in on his head! Mrs. Cheney calls him a bad man, Cheney himself says he’s “angry,” and conservative bloggers are calling it the worst cheap shot since cheap shots began. (As an example, see Hugh Hewitt’s over-the-top condemnation of the Democrats.)

What the heck is going on here? Mary Cheney’s lesbianism has been national knowledge since the vice presidential debate in the 2000 election four years ago. The Cheneys themselves have spoken about, or at least referred to, their daughter’s lesbianism in public, on television. Her lesbianism has often been mentioned as a possible reason for Cheney’s support for homosexual marriage. And finally, Mary Cheney is not simply a lesbian but a professional lesbian, working as a spokesman for homosexual issues for Coors Brewing Company and the Republican National Committee. So, while it was certainly tasteless in my opinion for Kerry (and Edwards) to mention Cheney’s daughter the way he did, and deserving of criticism, on what basis can it be considered such a terrible outrage, especially given the fact that the vice president thanked Edwards for the same remark?

Furthermore, when we remember Cheney’s own support for homosexual marriage (in which he openly broke with the president on the issue) and his treasonous refusal to defend supporters of the FMA (who include the president!) from Edwards’s smear, I must say that Kerry’s explanations of the Mary Cheney comment sound a lot more reasonable and fair to me than anything the frenzied Republicans are saying at the moment. Kerry gave an interview to the Des Moines Register:

“I said it in a very respectful way about their love for their daughter,” the Massachusetts senator said during a meeting with Des Moines Register reporters and editors before a campaign rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. “I’m surprised by the reaction. I was saying it in a way that embraced the love of their daughter.”

Kerry said he mentioned the Cheneys to underscore division between the vice president and Bush on the question of gay marriage.

“All I was trying do is point out that it—let their daughter speak. Was it a choice, or was she born the way she was. That was the question. I was being respectful, purely respectful,” Kerry said.

“I was trying to raise the point that they’ve embraced their daughter and that they don’t raise questions and that Dick Cheney himself is against a constitutional amendment (banning gay marriage), a reflection of love and I think recognition of who their daughter is.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 15, 2004 01:50 AM | Send