Well, the Republicans are shocked — shocked — that John Kerry would dare mention Dick Cheney’s gay daughter when discussing the issue of gay marriage. After all, the Cheneys are proud of their daughter and would certainly never use her name in a discussion of how tolerant they are.
For the Bush campaign to be up in arms over this is yet another high in their astounding track record of hypocrisy. It’s fair for them to trot out Mary Cheney in a cold, calculating way to try to ease fears of moderates (but not actually change any of their anti-tolerance policies and discriminatory goals); but if the opposition should ever say anything such as “The Cheneys love their lesbian daughter,” well, that’s going too far.
Take a look at this bizarre opinion piece which does seem to make the least bit of sense to me — perhaps one needs to have drunk the kool-aid to figure out what the big offense was.
If you have to stoop to the level of making the sexual orientation of your opponent’s children a campaign issue, then something is fundamentally (emphasis on mentally) wrong with the campaign. Debating the issues is one thing, but besmirching your opponent’s kids tells me that decency was just killed for the entire nation to see.
I just don’t understand these people. The Bush administration made sexual orientation a huge issue during this campaign — how much bigger an issue could there be than trying to enshrine intolerance and discrimination into the constitution? And when the child of the candidate will be directly affected by these horrific policies, well, one must ask: how could you treat your own child this way? Their answer, as always, is non-committal: they love their daughter. Really.
Wes points out another bout of hypocrisy with this issue:
The GOP has a nutty candidate for Senate in Illinois [Alan Keyes] who called Mary Cheney a “selfish hedonist” — but Dick Cheney wasn’t an “angry dad,” then. Lynne Cheney didn’t call that “tawdry.”
Gee, why weren’t they defending the daughter they love?
And the word “besmirching” is particularly telling of where these people are really coming from. Kerry acknowledged a fact: Mary Cheney is a lesbian. That’s only “besmirching” if you consider homosexuality a shameful or immoral condition, which is clearly true of George Bush’s base–and sadly, perhaps even Dick and Lynne Cheney as well?