Elephant In Exile

Excuse me if I turn a blind eye to Mrs. Cheney's faux rage.

The emerging post debate issue of Mary Cheney has left me somewhat perplexed. Why the sudden outrage by Lynn and Dick Cheney about the not so secret fact that their daughter, and BC04 campaign employee is a lesbian. I mean the Vice President has talked about it, so has his wife. There was nothing wrong with the context it was brought up in either, especially since the GOP has been waging a shameful fear campaign using gay baiting as a new fear tactic.

Seems to be that gay folk are the Swiss army knife of the Republican Party. First BC04 bases a huge portion of the presidential, congressional and senate races on stoking fears of gay marriage. Then, when Kerry happens to mention that Cheney's daughter is gay, they go ballistic and scream she was outed and rush to her defense. It's a private family matter they say.

But at the same time, these are the folks who think homosexuality is not a private matter. Senator Santorum, Shelby, Frist and others took to the floor of the Senate to decry the landmark Lawrence v. Texas decision which ruled that gay sex acts, between consenting adults was beyond the reach of government regulation. The fervor with which they argued was a passion that reached the level of true zealotry.

Here's what Senator Santorum had to say about decriminalizing homosexuality.

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home," the Pennsylvania Senator fumed, "then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything." Santorum went on to group gay
marriage with bestiality and pedophilia."

http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_sant.htm

Or Maybe Senator Cornyn's statement:

"It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right. . . . Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43048-2004Jul11.html

Or maybe the more recent statements by Oklahoma Senate Candidate Tom Coburn:

"Lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that's happened to us?"

And of course South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint who called for people just like Mary Cheney to be banned from teaching positions. In fact the South Carolina Republican Platform states:

"We do not agree that unnatural or unhealthy sexual practices ought to be legitimized or promoted in the classroom, nor do we believe that known practicing homosexuals should serve as teachers in public schools."

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/9837673.htm?1c

The republicans have launched a shameful and coordinated attack on gay America. Why isn't Mrs. Cheney speaking out on that? Because of course she traded in loyalty to her daughter for a chance at another four years on the government payroll. Family values indeed.

The only salve so far to this dehumanizing effort was Kerry and Edwards remarks during the debate. Gays aren't anti-family, they said, they're even party of the Vice President's family.

So, is it still a private family matter when Mary and her parents are actually working to recriminalize homosexuality?

Is it a private matter that as parents of a lesbian daughter they espouse family values, but support efforts to criminalize their daughter's very being and ban her from employment?

Not at all.

Perhaps that's why we're seeing such a strong reaction from the Cheney's. That and perhaps because Bush is on the ropes. You can't declare war against gay men and women, then cry foul when your daughter is the victim of collateral damage.