[Mb-civic] Outrage Over an Outing MARGARET CARLSON LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-carlson15oct15.story

MARGARET CARLSON

Outrage Over an Outing
 MARGARET CARLSON

 October 15, 2004

 I have to admit I found it a little jarring when Sen. John F. Kerry used
the word "lesbian" on Wednesday night. The evening was thick with
statistics, and the president had just shouted that Kerry had voted to
increase taxes 98 times for what seemed like the 98th time. As far as we've
come ‹ and I've come far for a product of the School of the Good Shepherd
outside of Harrisburg, Pa. ‹ the word "lesbian" still leaps out in the
middle of a presidential debate.

 The word came in an answer to moderator Bob Schieffer's novel way of
framing a question about gay rights: "Is homosexuality a choice?" Bush
sidestepped, as he did last year when asked if homosexuality was a sin.
(That time, he answered, "We're all sinners.") This time he replied, "I just
don't know," although he surely has an opinion. But to say so would risk
alienating one wing or the other of his party.

 Kerry, talking honestly ‹ and for once, it seemed, from the heart ‹ said:
"We're all God's children. 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 Š
who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it's not a choice." On
Thursday morning, I was even more jarred when I read Lynne Cheney's reaction
to Kerry's comment. "This is not a good man," she said. "Of course, I am
speaking as a mom, and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man. What
a cheap and tawdry political trick." My first instinct was to admire Cheney
as a fierce and righteous mother defending her daughter. But the more I
thought about it, it just didn't hold up. Her daughter is an adult; she's
not Amy Carter or Chelsea Clinton thrust into the public eye in tender
adolescence. She's not even Margaret Truman at the piano.

 Mary Cheney is happily in the public eye, an open lesbian whose job before
she joined the 2000 campaign was as liaison to the gay community for Coors
beer in Colorado. She now holds one of the most important jobs in her dad's
reelection effort. And her life partner joined the Cheneys on stage in St.
Louis after the debate. She'd have to be in deep denial to think her sexual
orientation wasn't going to come up, given that Republicans have made gay
marriage a defining issue of the campaign.

 I also wondered if Mrs. Cheney has talked to Mr. Cheney to get their
stories straight. It was dear old Dad who first made Mary Cheney a talking
point in the campaign earlier this year, discussing how there is some
daylight between his position on the gay marriage amendment and that of the
president. And in last week's veep debate, he actually thanked John Edwards
for making reference to Mary.

 This new openness was a departure. During the campaign in 2000, neither
Cheney would discuss Mary. Time magazine wrote a piece headlined "Where's
Mary?" about the constant references by the Cheneys to their daughter
Elizabeth ‹ the lawyer, wife and mother ‹ and their simultaneous silence on
Mary. There was no doubt they loved her, but also no doubt that a reporter
would be cast out into darkness for asking about her.

 Now the VP has gone public, showing how tolerant he is of his own daughter
‹ but he is still not willing to move his president or his party in that
direction.

 Kerry and Edwards see this and realize that discussing Mary Cheney is a
no-lose proposition: It highlights the hypocrisy of the Bush-Cheney position
to Democrats while simultaneously alerting evangelicals to the fact that the
Cheneys have an actual gay person in their household whom they apparently
aren't trying to convert or cure.

 Republicans know they have to be careful how they strike back for fear of
alienating their moderates. For the first time, Log Cabin Republicans are
not supporting the GOP. The constitutional amendment on gay marriage was too
far to go for a tax cut.

 You couldn't read Lynne Cheney's outburst about a cheap and tawdry trick
without thinking that she herself finds homosexuality cheap and tawdry.
Herein lies the irony of the flap. At the moment of Bush's evasion, it was
entirely appropriate for Kerry to drive home the point that, as the Cheneys
and millions of other American families know, homosexuality is about
identity, not about a lifestyle choice.

 By standing up and saying so, it was John Kerry who was defending Mary
Cheney. If anyone was doing her a disservice it was her mother. She used
Kerry's remarks to launch yet another character attack on the senator, when
in fact Kerry was just doing what Mary's own father hasn't.


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