By:Jerry Burke
In case you missed it, Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Because there isn't. She is who she is, and her homosexuality is as much a biological defect as is my love of the Mets. Actually, my defect may be greater.
So, after John Kerry mentioned she-who-will-not-be-named in the last debate, Cheney and his wife, Lynn, went ga-ga. "Now, you know, I did have a chance to assess John Kerry once more, and now the only thing I could conclude: This is not a good man," Mrs. Cheney said afterward. Strong words from the woman who, two months after Sept. 11, founded a right-wing think-tank that outed academics it considered "short on patriotism" for making critical comments about American policy. Who's your mommy now?
So, where was Lynn Cheney's outrage when her own party sought to pass an amendment to the Constitution to exclude homosexuals from a God-given right to happiness? Where were her brave words when Republican Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said, "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, 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."
Where were you then, Lynn Cheney, when this farcical bull feces was flying around Washington, D.C.? I'll tell you where she was. Silent, safe and secure in an undisclosed location, where everything is happy, the economy is good because someone bought three Snickers bars from the vending machine and Iraqi oil is flowing so fast that we're practically giving it all away.
Where was your soap box, Mrs. Cheney, when Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, called your daughter a "selfish hedonist" because she's a lesbian? Why isn't he "not a good man"?
Save for a brief, awkward comment from the veep at a campaign love-fest, the Cheneys have said nothing of substance on this issue. And yet they have the gall to chastise Kerry for bringing it up nary a week after Cheney thanked -- yes thanked -- John Edwards for his "kind words" about his daughter during the VP debate.
And that was all Cheney said. Thank you. No comment. Next question.
Is it in bad taste to use a child of a candidate for political gain? Maybe, but if anyone knows how to do it, it's the Bushies. In 2000, during the Republican primaries, Karl "the Brain" Rove, with the help of his minions, organized a whispering phone campaign against Bush's top competition, the eminently more respected and experienced John McCain. Callers asked this gem of a question: "Would knowing John McCain has a black daughter affect your vote?" He doesn't, in case that affects you. He has an adopted daughter from Bangladesh. Didn't matter. Bush won South Carolina in a squeaker and went on to become the leader of the free world.
Listen, if you want to leave kids out of it, fine. Let's start by leaving our young men and women out of harm's way in Iraq. Then we can worry about John Kerry's "goodness" because he says "lesbian" on national television. Grow up, already, and get back to the issues.
How's that for moral indignation?
