Thursday, October 14, 2004

More Lesbos

As James Wolcott points out here and here, when raging homophobes are shocked that you'd dare to point out that someone's a lesbian, they're revealing nothing but their own bigotry.

There's nothing shameful about being an out lesbian, what's shameful is that an unreconstructed bigot like Pat Buchanan gets to pontificate about it. It's aboslutely fascinating that merely mentioning that someone isn't straight makes you a bad person, while advocating for a constitutional amendment to make your running mate's daughter a second class citizen is just politics.

Shame on all of those people.


...Noted Now gives the full give and take:

ELIZABETH EDWARDS ON ABC RADIO: "She's overreacted to this and treated it as if it's shameful to have this discussion. I think that's a very sad state of affairs… I think that it indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences… It makes me really sad that that's Lynne's response."


LYNNE CHENEY AT POST-DEBATE RALLY: "The only thing I could conclude is that this is not a good man. This is not a good man. And, of course, I'm speaking as a mom. And a pretty indignant one. This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick."


DICK CHENEY TO NBC AFFILIATE WHO: "I would have said Sen. Kerry was out of line to bring my daughter into it. I thought it was totally inappropriate."


WHAT KERRY SAID: "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."


KERRY CAMPAIGN: Senior Kerry aide acknowledges "it was not his best moment," but calls charges that it was inappropriate "ridiculous… The woman is in her thirties. She's public about her sexuality. It was brought up in the last debate. So, what the hell?" ABC News' Marc Ambinder reports…




Maybe someone should, you know, wonder what Mary Cheney thinks about it? Of course, that would involve dragging her out of the closet they like to pretend she's in, even though she hasn't been there for a long time. [add: or any gay person, for that matter.]

...Lynne Cheney. Some parent. Silent when Republican attacks her daughter, outraged when a Democrat speaks of her respectfully.


..and, proving even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and again, Sullivan is for once, 100% correct.