Here’s the first email that actually does provide an argument about Mary Cheney and Kerry’s aside that does not hinge on hostility toward or embarrassment about homosexuals:
You choose who you marry (straight or gay, sanctioned or not). You don’t choose who your kids are with respect to items of their personality they can’t control (and this is your position on homo/hetero-sexuality). The problem with Kerry mentioning Mary Cheney’s sexual preference is that he is trying to score a political point against the father (and Bush) about a predisposition that the Veep’s child has, one over which Cheney has no control. You don’t use a child’s status/talents/mental acquity/etc against a parent. That simple proposition is something all parents recognize and this is why the reaction against Kerry is so strong on this point and so bi-partisanly strong.
This is the same lesson you learn as a parent (straight or gay) standing on a little league baseball field watching kids (some talented, some not) learning to play baseball. You don’t then turn on the parent and use the talent (good or bad) of the kid to score points in some argument you may be having with the parent.
And if you do, you will be shunned by all the other parents. Which is just what is happening to Kerry.
My only quibble here is that in the actual context of the question, Kerry wasn’t scoring a direct political point against Bush. He was responding to an open-ended question about whether being gay is a choice. Now that has consequences, of course. But if you live in a world where mentioning someone’s lesbianism is no big deal (and Kerry does), I can see why he wouldn’t see it that way. And that’s why almost no gay people have complained about this. Very few had any reaction to the comment. I didn’t even notice it till the emails started coming in – all from straight people. That’s because I live in a world where homosexuality is a non-issue. But many others – especially Republican parents – still do. And their worst nightmare, sadly, is a gay child. That’s why they leaped to Cheney’s defense. Their sympathies are with him. Mine are also with him – but with the millions of gay kids and citizens out there as well, people who are the target of his administration.
The Dish 