BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Selling out his own
daughter. Business is business, but even Vito Corleone was good
to his kids. Which is why I'm so appalled, if not surprised, that
Dick Cheney would sell out his own daughter on gay marriage.
Says
the vice-president: "The
president's taken the clear position that he supports a
constitutional amendment. I support him."
Now, I suppose it's possible that
you could have a child who's gay or lesbian, that you could oppose
marriage rights on religious or philosophical grounds or whatever,
and you could still love that child. But Cheney, as we know, has
actually changed his position in order to get on the right
side of George W. Bush's panderfest. Have he and his daughter, Mary
Cheney, talked about this? For that matter, do they still
talk?
Here's what Cheney said
in his debate with Joe Lieberman in 2000:
The fact of the matter is
we live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for
everybody. We don't get to choose, and shouldn't be able to choose
and say, "You get to live free, but you don't." And I think that
means that people should be free to enter into any kind of
relationship they want to enter into. It's really no one else's
business in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behavior in
that regard.
The next step, then, of course,
is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some
kind of official sanction, if you will, of the relationship, or if
these relationships should be treated the same way a conventional
marriage is. That's a tougher problem. That's not a slam
dunk.
I think the fact of the
matter, of course, is that matter is regulated by the states. I
think different states are likely to come to different
conclusions, and that's appropriate. I don't think there should
necessarily be a federal policy in this area.
I try to be open-minded about it
as much as I can, and tolerant of those relationships. And like
Joe, I also wrestle with the extent to which there ought to be
legal sanction of those relationships. I think we ought to do
everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of
relationships people want to enter into.
From let-the-states-decide (which
implies federal recognition) to a constitutional amendment to ban gay
marriage. What a long, strange, ugly trip it's been.
Andrew Sullivan, for some reason,
tries to throw Cheney a lifeline, arguing
that Cheney said he supports the president, not the amendment. To
which I say, if Cheney is parsing his words as carefully as Sullivan
thinks he is, then his performance is all the more
shameful.
And do check out DearMary.com.
A Corleone line that Cheney won't
be using: "Why do you come to me on the day of my daughter's
wedding?"
Quote of the day. "Just last
week he [George W. Bush] proposed to amend the Constitution
of the United States for political purposes. He has no right to
misuse the most precious document in our history in an effort to
divide this nation and to distract us from our goals." - John Kerry
during his victory
speech last
night.
Strong stuff. Too bad Kerry
fails
to show the same reverence for the Massachusetts Constitution, which
he favors amending for the sole purpose of getting an election-year
monkey off his back.
posted at 12:24 PM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
