cheneys and kerry and lesbians—oy vey

my wife and i rarely discuss politics, mostly because we agree on just about everything. some people would see this as boring. i see it as marriage insurance.
anyhoo, we were driving a couple days ago, and the subject of mary cheney came up. actually, it was foisted upon us by npr—regardless, there it was, in the car with us.

mary cheney’s parents (and some other republicans) are outraged. if you can imagine such a thing. they are outraged because john kerry referred to mary as a lesbian in the last president-wanna-be debate.

mind you, mary is a lesbian. she is not uncomfortable with this fact. she is as out as a person can be, actively working for gay and lesbian causes. many thousands of people know that mary is a lesbian, despite the fact that they probably have no use for this information.

kerry, in describing his belief that gays and lesbians are born gay or lesbian, dropped mary’s name as a person who probably also believes she was born as such.

well. you would think that kerry had outed mary on international tv and called her a hell-bound dyke. soon after, mary’s mom said kerry is a “not a good man.” she may be confusing him with saddam hussein, but we cannot confirm this. mary’s dad said he was “an angry father.” other republicans piled on with additional vilification.

it was scandalous, quite obviously.

members of the gay and lesbian community said so. but not in the way the elder cheneys would have liked. see, to profess righteous anger that someone was referred to as “gay” or “lesbian” it is necessary to view this label as libel. you must regard it as defamatory and malicious.

in short, you must find the idea of being gay or lesbian vile and unacceptable.

by their reaction, my wife and i concurred, that’s what these republicans have declared.

curiously, we saw little to corroborate our consensus in the mainstream media. not that it matters. once again, we were in agreement on a political issue. our drive and our marriage rolled merrily along.