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Edited on Thu Oct-14-04 02:27 PM by MockSwede
Merlot or Cabernet? Had a nice post from DUer about above. Long form of above sentiment.
I've taken the liberty to repost here. Made me feel good and feel I'm in here with good people.
Lynne Cheney, apparently, is now out there telling everyone it was mean and low of Kerry to bring up the fact that her daughter is a lesbian. Everyone from the HRC to Andrew Sullivan has responded that she's nuts. First of all, Mary Cheney is out and has been otu for years. Second, Lynne's own husband has been using Mary Cheney's homosexuality in speeches to try to make it look like at least ONE half of the ticket is something other than a rabid Christian fundamentalist. Third, Mary Cheney was brought up during the vice presidential debate...by the moderator, if I'm not mistaken. And fourth, and most obvious to everyone but Lynne...
CALLING SOMEONE A LESBIAN IS NOT AN 'ATTACK.'
Unless, of course, you are some kind of homophobe who believes that being a lesbian is the same thing as being a depraved pervert. Which Kerry is not, but which Lynne apparently is.
I'm really ready for this election to be done with. One of the reasons is that I have just about had it up to here with being a 'wedge issue.' This last piece of calculated manipulation is the last straw for me, and it's partly because it brings the whole thing closer to home than ever.
For you see, though I am not Mary Cheney (thank whatever the gods may be for that), I also have a Republican father. And, for a long time, I also had a mother who was ashamed to admit to anyone she knew that her daughter was a lesbian. After 10 years of being worked on by me, my partner, my siblings, and probably my father, my mother has finally come around. But there was a long period during which I was busy coming out to anyone I could find, but my mother was pretending that my sexuality was still a big secret. That pissed me off, and it pissed me off for a very simple reason: she might have thought, and she probably would have said, that she was keeping this 'secret' to protect me, but in fact she was keeping it to protect herself.
She didn't want to have to deal with what she thought she would have to deal with as the mother of a lesbian. She didn't want her friends talking about her 'misfortune' behind her back or pitying her for her terrible calamity. She didn't want to share the stigma she assumed I was living with.
If, at that point in time, my father had happened to be nominated as someone's vice presidential candidate, and the Democratic challenger had brought up the fact that he had a lesbian daughter during a nationally televised debate, my mother would have reacted exactly the same way Lynne Cheney says she did. And, and this is my point, she would have been wrong. Because at that point in time, the way she was treating me and my partner was doing me MUCH more damage than could ever have been done to me by having a man I didn't know tell everyone that I was just being who I was. I was in fact telling my mother the same exact thing constantly, but she didn't believe me.
My mother is now pleased to bring up my sexuality at any opportunity that presents itself--in large part because once she finally started telling people about me she discovered that in fact her friends didn't think it was a bad thing or that it reflected poorly on her. Since she herself is no longer ashamed of it, she also no longer feels that it's 'inappropriate' to discuss my orientation in public. And I'm sure she feels Kerry was within his rights to bring Mary Cheney up at the debate. In fact I expect to ahve a conversation with her about this very thing in the near future, since nwo that she has become a model of tolerance and open-mindedness, she never misses a chance to discuss sexual politics with me, alas.
My point is that the 'outcry' over the Mary Cheney reference, if in fact there is any real emotion behind it at all, is simply an expression of their own deep discomfort with the whole issue. They don't like having to confront the fact that the policy positions they take for their own political gain are hurting the people close to them. So their solution is to keep us all in the closet so they never have to think about that. All they are doing by manufacturing outrage over this is protecting themselves. It has got nothing to do with protecting Mary Cheney.
As for my Republican father, he fortunately has no political ambitions. Because I love him and I respect his integrity, I might well campaign for him if he ran for something, despite being on the other side of most of the issues. But by the same token, because he loves me and respects my marriage, he would not endorse that fucking amendment, no matter how many handlers told him to do it.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. The religious right, in cooperation with their creature George W. Bush, are the ones who made same-sex marriage a national issue by pushing that amendment. They are the ones who turned all of our private lives into political fodder. I cannot even tell you how destructive this whole thing has been to us psychologically. Until you've done it, you cannot imagine what it's like to have to turn on the news and see people you don't know trying to convince other people you dont' know that you and your partner are a social menace that needs to be curbed, contained, and if possible eliminated. It is unbelievably infuriating to watch a bunch of straight people who are utterly without a clue about what it is really like to be gay debating the validity of the most important relationship in your life as if it were an abstract issue. You go through four years of having the woman you love turn to you and ask, "Why do people hate us so much?" and not being able to answer, and then maybe you'll understand me when I say that I have no fucking time to weep over Lynne Cheney's outraged sensibilities. If Lynne really wants to help her daughter then she should get her husband the puppet master to put the kaibash on that fucking amendment. Till then, well, she can go Cheney herself.
It drives me absolutely nuts to see the Republicans getting bent out of shape over this, as if Mary Cheney deserves to be protected from all the ugliness that their own party has unleashed just because she's a Republican's daughter. I'm a Republican's daughter too, Lynne. That hasn't stopped your husband and his cronies from making my life hell to the extent that they can. You and Dick helped build this horrible world. Mary can take her chances in it just like the rest of us.
Faugh,
The Plaid Adder
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