Dick Cheney has a problem. The pit bull of American conservative politics is seeing his supporters take nasty shots at his daughter Mary, who is both openly gay and pregnant. For most people, this would be a very happy time, and we are sure the Vice President is happy for his daughter and his family. But he can't be happy that his supporters - those voters he courted and nurtured into being the Bush-Cheney base - are being so venomous about his daughter and this happy time in her life.
Take, for example, Robert Knight, from the Culture & Media Institute at the Media Research Center, who said "I think it's tragic that a child has been conceived with the express purpose of denying it a father." Knight also said Cheney and her partner Heather Poe were "shortchanging" the child. The couple lives in Virginia, which won't recognize Poe's rights as a spouse or a partner.
Focus On The Family, perhaps the most venomous of all the so-called Christian rights' groups, issued a statement that criticized all same-sex couples who raise children. Republicans want a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and conservatives would oppose Cheney and Poe getting hitched. Forget marriage, they don't even want them to raise a child.
But why? There's no evidence that children brought up by same-sex couples fare any worse or any better than those in different-sex households (see: American Psychological Association study). The issue for these folks is cultural - they object to homosexuality and changes to the culture of child rearing they know and understand. Consistent with the Bush administration's practice (not pledge) of being dividers, not uniters, Cheney and the politicians with whom he aligns himself have repeatedly spoken in agreement with the issues that the Christian right promotes.
The Christian right should realize they're being suckered. The Bush administration doesn't care about them, and the Republican Party just wants their votes. In mid-October, a former official with Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives published a book, Tempting Faith, that disclosed that while national Christian leaders get public support from Bush and his Republican allies, they are called "nuts" behind the scenes and only used in efforts to mobilize voters. Anyone who examines the legislative objectives of Bush and the Republicans can see that their true concern is with giving aid to the objectives of corporations and the very rich. If they were truly religious people, wouldn't they have learned the lesson about the camel and the eye of the needle?
Still, Republicans are unlikely to admit the facade they've been using for so long and support gay rights, especially the right of gay marriage - not when fostering opposition to that worked so well in bringing out the votes of the intolerant in 2004. That's consistent with the history of conservatism. As various times in the life of the American politics, conservatives have opposed the right of women to vote, the right of black citizens to vote, Social Security and the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the creation of Medicare, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act, among others. None of these measures - which benefit the people and democracy - are consistent with the wishes of the business constituency or the religious voters that the Republican party currently needs to mobilize to get elected.
What's the problem with gay marriage? By what authority do conservative groups dictate who can love whom in society? They will claim by the authority of God, but religious text has been the subject of debate for thousands of years, and besides, with a separation of church and state, those who don't choose to follow a particular religion should be able to have the rights that are due them under the law. It is not the place of law to codify any religion, nor to measure what kind of love between two people is more worthy of recognition than another.
Ten years ago, in an interview with The Advocate, Bruce Springsteen said of the right to marry:
Take, for example, Robert Knight, from the Culture & Media Institute at the Media Research Center, who said "I think it's tragic that a child has been conceived with the express purpose of denying it a father." Knight also said Cheney and her partner Heather Poe were "shortchanging" the child. The couple lives in Virginia, which won't recognize Poe's rights as a spouse or a partner.
Focus On The Family, perhaps the most venomous of all the so-called Christian rights' groups, issued a statement that criticized all same-sex couples who raise children. Republicans want a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and conservatives would oppose Cheney and Poe getting hitched. Forget marriage, they don't even want them to raise a child.
But why? There's no evidence that children brought up by same-sex couples fare any worse or any better than those in different-sex households (see: American Psychological Association study). The issue for these folks is cultural - they object to homosexuality and changes to the culture of child rearing they know and understand. Consistent with the Bush administration's practice (not pledge) of being dividers, not uniters, Cheney and the politicians with whom he aligns himself have repeatedly spoken in agreement with the issues that the Christian right promotes.
The Christian right should realize they're being suckered. The Bush administration doesn't care about them, and the Republican Party just wants their votes. In mid-October, a former official with Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives published a book, Tempting Faith, that disclosed that while national Christian leaders get public support from Bush and his Republican allies, they are called "nuts" behind the scenes and only used in efforts to mobilize voters. Anyone who examines the legislative objectives of Bush and the Republicans can see that their true concern is with giving aid to the objectives of corporations and the very rich. If they were truly religious people, wouldn't they have learned the lesson about the camel and the eye of the needle?
Still, Republicans are unlikely to admit the facade they've been using for so long and support gay rights, especially the right of gay marriage - not when fostering opposition to that worked so well in bringing out the votes of the intolerant in 2004. That's consistent with the history of conservatism. As various times in the life of the American politics, conservatives have opposed the right of women to vote, the right of black citizens to vote, Social Security and the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the creation of Medicare, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act, among others. None of these measures - which benefit the people and democracy - are consistent with the wishes of the business constituency or the religious voters that the Republican party currently needs to mobilize to get elected.
What's the problem with gay marriage? By what authority do conservative groups dictate who can love whom in society? They will claim by the authority of God, but religious text has been the subject of debate for thousands of years, and besides, with a separation of church and state, those who don't choose to follow a particular religion should be able to have the rights that are due them under the law. It is not the place of law to codify any religion, nor to measure what kind of love between two people is more worthy of recognition than another.
Ten years ago, in an interview with The Advocate, Bruce Springsteen said of the right to marry:
It does matter. It's very different than just living together. First of all, stepping up publicly- which is what you do: You get your license, you do all the social rituals- is a part of your place in society and in some way part of society's acceptance of you. [...] Coming out and saying whom you love, how you feel about them, in a public way was very, very important. Those are the threads of society; that's how we all live together in some fashion. There is no reason I can see why gays and lesbians shouldn't get married. It is important because those are the things that bring you in and make you feel a part of the social fabric.
Excluding people from the social fabric is exactly what this is all about to the conservatives. Republicans made a point of showcasing themselves as defenders of "family values." How does preventing gays from marrying or raising children value the family?
More info: Cheney's Grandchild Will Have Two Mommies
