Dick Cheney's daughter is an open lesbian-and now she is pregnant. Her presence would seem to pose a problem for conservatives. How can they decry gay unions and then fail to decry Mary Cheney's lifestyle? In this week's cover story Andrew Sullivan explores the conundrum represented by Mary Cheney and then dissects the conservative reaction to her pregnancy. He asks, is the conservative position on homosexuality sustainable?Now, I guess if you work for the New Republic you're not expected to actually know or hang out with any conservatives, but this paragraph (what, you ask, can I expect when it's advertising and Andrew Sullivan piece) seems particularly foolish.
- Who says that conservatives (or at least, the moral conservatives who are the ones who have issues with homosexual behavior anyway) don't decry this. I know I've read several do so. Perhaps this got missed because many social conservatives are actually pretty quiet and polite about the things we disapprove of. Don't assume that just because you equate us with people who bring down airplanes and saw off heads that we'll actually comport ourselves that way in the real world.
- How exactly is it that the New Republic folks manage to oscillate between wishing the Republicans would 'go back' to their non-conservative roots (as they see them) and then the next minute act as if Republican = Conservative. The fact is, Dick Cheney is not particularly socially conservative, and certainly no one has ever suggested that his daughter is. Nor, I suspect, is it mainly socially conservative concerns that hire her as a lobbyist
- In what sense exactly does Mary Cheyne having a baby change anything that would make social conservatives beliefs about the morality of homosexual activity untenable? Is it imagined that we've never heard of lesbians going off and finding a way to get pregnant? Is it imagined that we've never heard of Republican politicians having children who go off and do very un-conservative things?
Come on, guys. This is weak...
Well put, and needed saying. Why Sullivan and those of his ilk think conservatives will find Mary Cheney's pregnancy a bigger deal than those of the scores of other lesbian moms out there is beyond me. Perhaps they're just annoyed there wasn't more of an outcry.
ReplyDeleteKeep meaning to read "Evidence, Belief and Will" but haven't yet found the time. Looks interesting.
These kind of weak statements/arguments/propaganda/whatever you want to call them, goes on with both sides of the political fence. Writers from both sides try to categorize, generalize, and otherwise portray their political and philosophical opponents as all thinking exactly alike, or make statements about their general behavior that isn't completely true etc, etc, etc.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that your father taught me, was the many levels of diversity that exist within all groups of political thought, religious thinking and so on.
By way of example:
A friend of mine who is a homosexual (and a liberal) taught me that animal rights activists get it wrong when they talk about hunting and eating animals. Hunting and eating animals is normal, he said, because we are all part of the food chain, we (humans) just happen to be on the top of it, although from time to time we fall off, and animals eat us.
TJR
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