A week or so ago, John Kerry mentioned that Dick Cheney’s daughter was a lesbian. As we and others have noted, this is in no way news; Mary Cheney has been very open about her sexuality for years, even serving in official and unofficial gay & lesbian outreach roles. Kerry, for his part, said nothing negative at all about this; he merely noted that the VP’s daughter was gay, and that he didn’t think she had any choice in the matter:
We’re all God’s children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was, she’s being who she was born as.
Well, you’d never know the context from the shitstorm the right side of the press has stirred up; they’ve spent an awful lot of ink describing this as somehow akin to pointing out that someone was unfaithful, or had an abortion, with all the assumed moral equivalency that implies. Clearly, the reasoning goes, Kerry was hitting below the belt here.
Er, what? How’s that again? Kerry notes Mary’s orientation — in a pretty fair and basic statement, with no value judgements attached — and in doing so calls attention, subtly, to the GOP’s position on All Things Gay. The GOP, in response, goes into a frenzy of weird accusations, and in doing so say (or imply) all sorts of nasty things about gay people. And yet somehow Kerry mentioning Mary’s orientation is the problem. Wow.