It wasn't exactly an immaculate conception, but social conservatives were sent into a frenzy last week when the media bore news that Vice President Dick Cheney's out lesbian daughter Mary is pregnant. The Bush administration's most ardent hangers-on (through a failed Iraq war, the blunders of Katrina, etc.) were reduced to making ridiculous homophobic comments about the daughter of the country's vice president and her partner, Heather Poe.
"Unconscionable," wrote Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America. "Her action repudiates traditional values and sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation."
Really? Well, if the fundies were genuinely concerned about the absence of fathers, maybe they would be focused also on the issue of poverty, which increasingly affects many families, gay and straight. But no, they just continue to bash the gays and our families.
One aspect that has slipped under the radar of the mainstream media coverage is the fact that Cheney and Poe reside in Virginia, one of the states most hostile to same-sex relationships. As the law now stands, Poe has no legal rights to the child. And under the recently passed state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, it's uncertain whether Cheney and Poe would be able to write binding medical directives and wills. On media critic Howard Kurtz's CNN show Reliable Sources last weekend, Cheney's baby was discussed, but no mention was made of the potential legal pitfalls should something happen to Cheney, the baby, or if she and Poe split up.
In one of her few interviews earlier this year, while promoting her book, Cheney told Primetime Live, "Heather and I already are married. We have built a home and a life together � The way I look at it is, we're just waiting for state and federal law to catch up to us."
That may take awhile, especially given the rabid homophobia exhibited by many conservatives. And given that Virginia voters just passed their restrictive amendment, we don't expect the legal landscape in that state to change for a long time.
There may be hope, however. The fundies increasingly are being forced to come to terms with gay people, even in their own midst. This week, on the heels of the Ted Haggard sex scandal, another Colorado megachurch pastor was forced to resign after admitting to having had sex with men. The Reverend Paul Barnes said that he had often cried himself to sleep, begging God to end his attraction to men. This news has rocked the evangelical community, but according to the New York Times, some leaders in the movement think the recent disclosures could provide an opening for greater compassion toward gay people.
The Reverend Dr. Tony Campolo, an American Baptist minister, told the Times that many evangelicals continue to subscribe to long-discredited theories that men become gay because they had a dominating mother or were victims of sexual abuse as children. Others on Christian radio, Campolo said, "have portrayed gays as promiscuous people, which they are not."
But the recent news about the gay preachers might be the beginning of change. He said, "What we're seeing here is a growing awareness among evangelicals that they have oversimplified, made false judgments, and been very, very mean to the gay and lesbian community."
We're not holding our breath, of course. But the social conservatives will continue to be confronted with the reality that we have always known: gays are everywhere.
