Mary Cheney, the Vice President’s lesbian daughter, is pregnant. (A fact conveniently kept secret until after the November elections.) She intends to raise the child with her partner even though the two live in Virginia – a state that recently put a ban on same sex marriages and legal rights for unmarried couples of any sexual orientation in the state’s constitution. Suddenly the issue of committed same-sex relationships and child-rearing by same sex couples has become a little less abstract for those on the right.Unfortunately, they are not open minded people taking this opportunity to rethink the impact of their positions. Instead they are turning their mean-spiritedness against Ms. Cheney.
Here is Joel Connelly in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
With the news that Mary Cheney is pregnant, leaders of the Christian right have marched yet another step forward:
Instead of arguing that the state's place is in the bedroom, they're now saying a proper spot for intervention is the uterus.
The vice president's 37-year-old daughter is a lesbian, partnered for 15 years. Although they've attended a White House dinner for Prince Charles and Camilla, the couple forfeit legal rights when they drive home to Virginia: The Old Dominion recently voted to ban both gay marriage and civil unions.
… on the religious right, the poor kid is getting prejudged and condemned before birth.
Janice Crouse, senior fellow with Concerned Women of America, opined: "They're deliberately bringing a child into the world without a father, leaving a gaping hole. ... Father absence is the biggest problem we're facing in this country ... the root cause of all sorts of negative outcomes -- drug use, juvenile delinquency. You name it."
At the Family Research Institute, Director Dr. Paul Cameron warned of a life of "privation and disruption," adding, "By this selfish action, Cheney is not merely disrupting society, she is being cruel to her child."
In 2004, Fox loudmouth Bill O'Reilly criticized Sen. John Kerry as not being "respectful" of Mary Cheney's "private life" when Kerry mentioned her sexual orientation in a TV debate.Last week, however, an "O'Reilly Factor" segment was given over to Cheney's pregnancy and same-sex parenting.
O'Reilly asked whether the child will "suffer a deficit" as a result of being raised by two women, and whether "it would be mandatory for a lesbian couple to bring in some male presence to help the child."
Allowing the child's parents to marry is apparently out of the question. O'Reilly warned last year that same-sex marriage could lead o people petitioning courts to marry goats.
1 comment:
The problem for these people is that now she is pregnant and there isn't anything they can do about it. She can't send the unborn baby back.
Interesting how when pro-choice folks talk about children being born into the most horrendous circumstances imaginable, a lot of these religious rightwingers talk about how "God will provide," yet somehow Cheney's baby is going to hell in a fatherless hand-basket.
If she were not a lesbian, but instead married to a man who was a deranged wife-beating, drug-addicted child molester, would they chastise her for getting pregnant?
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