Friday, October 15, 2004

Politics: Kerry didn't gay bait

He used Mary Cheney to shame Bush for gay-baiting, according to Timothy Noah.

Also, Oliver Willis links some comments by Pat Buchanan that demonstrate clearly that much of the Right is angry over the Kerry comments because they are unable to escape their own bigotry:

but when you do it the second time in a presidential debate and use the cold, hard word "lesbian," which really is offensive and what is to many people, this is deliberate. This is cold. This is calculated because Kerry and Edwards are hurting over the fact that they are both sympathetic to the idea that homosexual marriages should be elevated to the same level as traditional marriage. And to bring an innocent woman into this, you know what this is like? It's like finding a conservative who's a right-to-lifer and going on television and saying, "I'm sorry, my friend's daughter had an abortion." You don't do that.
Believe me, I WISH KE were more sympathetic to the above idea. And Pat, how, under your logic, is Mary Cheney so innocent (she is a "lesbian," after all)?

AND an abortion is a pretty private matter. Mary Cheney is anything but private over her sexual orientation.

AND an abortion is clearly a choice (imagine that, that's why we're PRO-CHOICE!). Sexual orientation is clearly not. (Orientation is quite unique from practice--practice may involve choice, but orientation clearly does not.)

How come these distinctions don't occur to the Right? Sure, the 'lesbian' association clearly irritates the hard right base, but SHOULDN'T hypocrisy being irritating?

1 comment:

Garrett said...

I've heard that argument in so many ways, but it simply doesn't hold up to consistency. Mary Cheney is a grown woman, a proud lesbian, and I'm sure you've read about the Coors program she's worked with. Your argument simply doesn't hold unless there's something of which she and her family ought to be ashamed, and I'm sure you agree that no one should be ashamed that she's a lesbian. Otherwise, it's just exposing republican doublethink.

Don't worry, there's lots of Kerry/Edwards doublethink on the issue as well, its just that Bush/Cheney is in no position to expose it. Both campaigns are doing a pitiful job on the issue, the difference is that Bush/Cheney do a pitiful job on the issue to appeal to their base, and Kerry/Edwards does a pitiful job to try to appeal to swing voters. Doesn't particularly justify it as right or wrong, but it does illuminate who has more leverage to work with, and obviously that's Kerry/Edwards. By repeatedly lying that they believe marriage is only between a man and a woman, they still have room to point out hypocrisy on the other side. This is a practical analysis. Don't think I'm defending what they're doing. It sucks.

But as for mentioning Mary Cheney, candidates mention family members all the time in the context of pleasantries, and Bush even pointed out that Theresa worked in Abstinence programs, somewhat in opposition to Kerry. Republicans support abstinence programs as morally proper. This Dem says that abstinence programs are offensive to our better senses as they've been shown time and time again to be ineffective in reducing teen pregnancy in public health studies, and are thus a waste of money. And, ideologies aside, I don't think either of us like it when our government wastes our money.

While there are obvious differences in connotation to being a lesbian and working in an abstinence program, they logically parallel if you do not allow society to wrongfully stigmatize homosexuality.

Your comment just seems painfully irrelevant to me. See Andrew Sullivan's comments in an earlier post on this site. As the foremost homosexual conservative in the blogosphere, his arguments are more clear, contextual, and appropriately personal than my own.