Apparently, mentioning Mary is becoming an issue. From Salon tonight, in a War Room entry titled "Using Mary Cheney":
Vice President Dick Cheney's gay daughter Mary has now come up in two debates. Sen. John Edwards brought her up in his match with Cheney last week, and Wednesday night John Kerry invoked her to respond to a question from Bob Schieffer about whether people "choose" to be gay. This time Republicans are crying foul. Bush campaign spokesman Dan Bartlett told NBC Kerry "stepped outside of the bounds" when he brought up the vice president's daughter. "A flag should have been thrown." Lynne Cheney is furious, telling a Pennsylvania campaign rally Kerry "is not a good man" because he brought her daughter's sexuality into the debate and calling the remark "a cheap and tawdry political trick."
We had mixed feelings about the Democrats' use of Mary Cheney. In the moment it looked a little like an effort to shout THE VICE PRESIDENT HAS A GAY DAUGHTER to red-state homophobes. It's safe to say it wasn't meant to boost Cheney's appeal in the blue states. But the GOP's hypocrisy on the issue makes Mary Cheney an almost irresistible touchstone. And when Bush ducked Schieffer's question about whether being gay is a "choice" -- "I don't know," he said twice -- it was hard not to want to rub his nose in the fundamental simplicity of the issue by bringing it back to someone Bush knows who happens to be gay.
We'll give this one to Kerry-Edwards on points, if not on style.
I agree that the hypocrisy makes it fair game. But I think it was fair game before that.
Shouting THE VICE PRESIDENT HAS A GAY DAUGHTER to red-state homophobes? Definitely. Sounds like they saw The Daily Show bit after the Edwards debate. That was the gist of it, and it was hysterical. I imagine their intentions were to use us homos to their own advantage. But getting used isn't always a bad thing, even to the party getting "used."
I watched the veep debate with another gayguy, who happens to sit on HRC's board of governors. He turned to me in the middle of the Mary Cheney exchange and said, "This is really going to help us."
Of course Kerry and Edwards wanted to tar the Bush-Cheney ticket with homo-in-the-family to scare red-state homophobes. But it's just as likely to give red-state homophobes pause. It's not just a bunch of decadent freaks in San Francisco and New York City spawning these sodomites, some of our best families are producing them. AND reconsidering their politics because of them.
It is well known by now that the biggest factor by far in any person's journey from homophobe to acceptance is getting to know a homo. Or discovering they already know one. There are still millions out there who don't know one of us--particularly in the red states and rural areas where more gays and lesbians are still hiding--but they're coming to "know" more and more celebrities whom they admire as gay. Discovering that one of our most prominent right-wing families includes a lesbian--and embraces her, mostly--can be a very powerful message.
As for using the individual, doesn't the public-figure rule apply? Mary worked more or less as professional lesbian in a high-profile job at Coors, so she clearly has no shyness about going public with her sexuality. And it's not like she has shrunk away from politics since then.
If Dems were using her sexuality AGAINST her, that would be a big problem. But what have they said? That she is a lesbian. That's not an insult to a lesbian. Unless you're in the closet, it's nothing to be ashamed of. I actually feel twinges anger at the suggestion that it's dirty politics. It suggests that the typical gay person would feel embarassment at the public knowing they were gay.
When the Rs use every chance they can get to point out that Edwards as a trial lawyer and using it dismissively, they're using that against him--they're implying that there IS something wrong with that. They're suggesting that there IS something to be ashamed of there.
I bristle at the suggestion that it's "cheap and tawdry" to mention that an out gay person is gay. That clearly implies that they would/should be ashamed by the mention.
Lynne Cheney is the one with the problem. If my mom went around screaming bloody murder for someone mentioning my gayness, I would feel horrible--because my mom was ashamed of me.
One of the happiest days of my life was when one of the old ladies at my mom's Catholic bridge club mentioned what a nice young husband I'd make, and my mother said off-handedly that that wasn't going to happen, because I was gay. It took her years to get to that point. And what a milestone--it actually didn't bother her that the bridge ladies knew. And of course I didn't care that they knew.
I doubt very much that Mary Cheney gives a rats ass if some church lady in Idaho knows she's gay. But her mother cringing at the woman knowing--that's gotta hurt like hell.
And frankly, well-meaning journalists cringing for her . . . that doesn't feel that great either. (And I assure you, they're well-meaning at Salon.) If Mary lived in Boise and was in physical danger, or perhaps professional danger, that would be different. But she's not, and she's out, and anyone cringing for her just suggests there's reason to cringe. And that's the part that hurts.
I think it hurts all of us gay people out here putting ourselves in her shoes and feeling a little hurt that you guys would be cringing for us. It's really OK now. You don't have to cringe for us anymore.
Update:
I just learned that Andrew Sullivan has a similar argument up on his blog. The opening:
I keep getting emails asserting that Kerry's mentioning of Mary Cheney is somehow offensive or gratuitous or a "low blow". Huh? Mary Cheney is out of the closet and a member, with her partner, of the vice-president's family. That's a public fact. No one's privacy is being invaded by mentioning this. When Kerry cites Bush's wife or daughters, no one says it's a "low blow." The double standards are entirely a function of people's lingering prejudice against gay people.
He goes on to make several points similar to mine above and a few more. But the more I think about this, the more it bugs me that the (straight) press sees it as acceptable to label use of Mary as unscrupulous. And they don't see the implicit message they're sending by doing that.
