Mary Cheney Is Expecting
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Religion, Sexuality
Now that’s a beautiful thing. Congratulations ladies. I wish you and your partner Heather Poe a happy, healthy pregnancy.
Still, Sullivan talks about the implications…
You cannot be a party that sees gay love, marriage and parenthood as the work of Satan and have a vice-presidential family that is busy building a lesbian family as an integral part of it. [...] Commiserations to James Dobson, Hugh Hewitt, George Allen, Rick Santorum, Sam Brownback, Mitt Romney, and, of course, George W. Bush, who backed a federal constitutional amendment to strip the daughter of his vice-president of dignity, family and civil rights.
Think this will change anybody’s mind? Don’t count on it. Because apparently, religious groups are already talking about Cheney’s decision…
“Just because you can conceive a child outside a one-woman, one-man marriage doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Love can’t replace a mother and a father.”
- Carrie Gordon Earll, policy analyst for Focus on the Family
“It’s very disappointing that a celebrity couple like this would deliberately bring into the world a child that will never have a father. They are encouraging people who don’t have the advantages they have.”
- Janice Crouse, senior fellow for Concerned Women for America
Personally, I can’t wait for a future where nobody will pay any attention to groups who condemn two people for having a child.
How about you?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 and is filed under Religion, Sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 6th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
It is perhaps an indictment of our civilisation that such an “event” even makes the “news”.
Where is that line between the public’s “right to know” and the individual’s “right to privacy”?
How is about those criticising Cheney and partner have their “right to conception” subjected to the same level of public debate?
December 6th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
“Personally, I can’t wait for a future where nobody will pay any attention to groups who condemn two people for having a child.”
Agreed, and I can’t wait for a future where nobody will condemn consenting adults for what they do with their personal lives.
I just don’t understand these people who think that any child is doomed who is brought up by a family that doesn’t consist of one man and one woman. There are all kinds of reasons why children are raised by a single parent, or by people who are not married (ie, a mother and a grandmother, father and uncle, family friend/godparent, etc.). As long as the home is loving and nurturing for the child, WHO CARES?
December 7th, 2006 at 12:09 am
Finally, after years of sending frozen frosting tubes of Radioactive Dos Mojo Spunk via overnight FedEx to Mary: the Dos and the Cheney have finally mixed to create the perfect Ice-Hockey-Lesbian-War-Contractor-baby!!! (Tears welling up…choking up….im out)
December 7th, 2006 at 12:12 am
“Personally, I can’t wait for a future where nobody will pay any attention to groups who condemn two people for having a child.�
Absolutely positively…. I SO agree with you on this! And I honor this couple for wanting to be parents no matter what the fallout is likely to be – I’m pretty sure it’ll be extreme, which is sad for them, for their child, and ultimately for all of us.
I was a single mother for 9 years. Then I married again, and my daughter had two parents. During both parts of her childhood, she was very much loved and of course is to this day; had her second parent been another woman instead of a man, I don’t see how that would have mattered. What MATTERS is loving your children – not who does that loving.
I so desperately want to see a day when gender has nothing to do with anything (other than the obvious that so far in this world’s history, only women are able to bear children) – but I do not believe that will happen in my remaining life span.
Wake up people. What matters is children who are loved and cared for and who learn to love and care by that example. It’s time to let your narrow puritanism die a natural death.
December 7th, 2006 at 12:33 am
Thats right! WHat is important is that these two women are HAPPY! Nothing is more important than the happiness of two adults, not even the welfare of the children they are going to bring into the world. Love! Peace! Flowers! Happiness!
Forget that child, it is just a commodity. Why stop at one, why not get an Afro-baby, I hear they accessorize well with other hollywood bimbo accessories.
When will people learn that having children isn’t about how happy it makes the parents? It is about the child being given the best possible chance at a normal life, and by default lesbians giving birth doesn’t do that. What a disgrace that people are making excuses for this kind of nonsense. This isn’t like adoption where you are saving a kid from a horrible life, this is a planned action that circumvents physical reality in order to make two women mommies for their own personal happiness.
Sorry, I just had to get this out. I know it will be removed soon, but I grow weary of every post that celebrates the continued perversion of America in the name of “equality for all”. This isn’t equality for all, it is intentionally short-shrifting a child from a father. That isn’t equality, that is tragedy.
But hey, as long as we can call traditional values and common sense backwards bigotry while taking a swipe at those mean old homophobes, who cares?
December 7th, 2006 at 10:40 am
Gee, Brian, the only post I see here about happiness being a reason to have a child — is yours. The rest of us are talking about loving homes for children, regardless of the gender of the people raising them.
But thanks for reminding me what bigotry and homophobia look like.
December 7th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
Ooooh, gal, you said it SO much better than I could have; good thing I didn’t get here until now, hmmm?
I guess the only thing I really can’t fail to say is that there’s no overwhelming proof that having a “father” is of overweening importance other than as the motive (think “sperm”) part of conception. There are sufficient studies to prove that it’s the amount of love, interaction, care, and consideration in homes which produces “normal” kids, not what gender provides that homelife.
I’d say it’s worse to have a homophobic male parent than it is to have a loving lesbian parent.
[Note please: I am not a lesbian; I AM of a generation that seems to have more than its fair share of homophobes. I simply feel that PEOPLE are the important thing - people and how they raise their children. There's just no reason to assume that every child MUST HAVE a "christian-ethic" father in the home in order to be loved and to grow up a "normal loving human being".... which is what a lot of the homophobia zeros out to meaning....]
December 8th, 2006 at 12:04 am
So I take it homosexuals WANT their families compared to dysfunctional heterosexual ones, then? They want the legitimacy of their relationships to be caused on the children who don’t get harmed by their relationships?
There are some upstanding members of society who survived growing up with a single-welfare mother, but we aren’t celebrating the normalcy of welfare moms and applauding them for occaisionally raising upstanding members of society.
Vicki Frey, what PC craptrap have you been eating that you think having a father isn’t important? There have been an equal number of studies indicating fathers and mothers love their children differently and that men and women have different brain patterns. Purposely short-shrifting a child of that experience for your own happiness is appauling.
What other reason than personal happiness could you possibly offer me that Mary Cheney and her partner are concieving a child “together?” If they wanted to provide a loving home to a child they could always have adopted, instead they chose to play pretend and have their own child, which they will raise in a fatherless home because it feeeeeeeels good.
Don’t get me started on the “homophobia” crap. True or false: A family consiting of two lesbians and a child has no father. True or false: Studies have proven that children who lack either a mother or father figure are generally worse off than counterparts who have both. True are false: Studies have proven that same-gender 2-parent households are no WORSE thsn 2-parent different-gender households (implying a less than or equal to relationship.)
This isn’t about fear of homosexuals, it is about valuing human life and a giving children the best possible childhood. Homosexual activists don’t see anyone but themselves. All they see is their happiness being derided and that makes them angry, so they call anyone who dares argue the proven superiority of having a mother and a father as parental figures as a homophobe. They are the ones who want to upset the social order with statistically inferior relationships and in general warpt the social structures. The religious right isn’t playing offense, it is homosexual activists who are trying to impose their will on the rest of us. Anyone who can’t see that is blind.
December 8th, 2006 at 12:59 am
“True or false: Studies have proven that children who lack either a mother or father figure are generally worse off than counterparts who have both.”
False. What studies *have* shown is that single-parent children are worse off, and you have no basis for inferring that it is a problem of sexual difference, rather than simply a problem of the number of parents. Can you find a legitimate study that shows single gay parents are worse than single straight parents?
“True are false: Studies have proven that same-gender 2-parent households are no WORSE thsn 2-parent different-gender households (implying a less than or equal to relationship.)”
Um, faulty logic. Last time I checked, “no worse” means “equal to or better than.” “I scored no worse than 80% on my test” means I got at least 80%.
Back to your initial definition of parenting’s goal: “It is about the child being given the best possible chance at a normal life, and by default lesbians giving birth doesn’t do that.”
What keeps that child from being “normal?” From what I can tell, it’s only people like you who will tell that child he/she’s not normal.
December 8th, 2006 at 10:04 am
You have every right to your opinion on how children should be raised. So do other people. You do not have the right to impose your moral code on others. The bottom line is that children can be raised into “normal,” healthy, productive, and even happy adults by a variety of parenting models — single parents, couples, same-gender couples, etc. And conversely, I’ve seen many a f’ed-up adult who is the product of a good-old-fashioned hetero-married upbringing.
So, Brian, given your view of these matters (which I’m sure those of us on the other side of the debate will never sway you), what are you proposing be done about this? It sounds like you don’t want to allow children to be born into non-”normal” families. Does your moral code require legislation to prevent this? Who gets to dictate who is allowed to have children and who isn’t?