The "L" Word

Well, instead of talking about policy or fixing on Bush's outright lie regarding his past comments on Osama Bin Laden, the media is talking about Kerry's mention of the Cheney's lesbian daughter. Dave Cullen writes a piece in Salon saying virtually everything that needs to be said about it (subscription or free day pass required for article):

• Mary Cheney has been happily out of the closet for at least a decade, so John Kerry was hardly dragging her out against her will.
  
• She spent the late '90s working as a veritable professional lesbian, as gay and lesbian corporate relations manager for Coors Brewing Co.
  
• Dick Cheney himself has been using her sexuality on the campaign trail. Click here to watch a Human Rights Campaign ad with him on the stump on Aug. 24, 2004: "Lynne and I have a gay daughter ... "
  
• The Bush-Cheney administration has shamelessly used homosexuality as a wedge issue, never hesitating to play the sodomite card when it serves their political ends.
  
• John Edwards brought up Mary Cheney in response to a similar gay-rights question just eight days earlier in the veep debate. Dick Cheney responded by thanking him for his kind remarks.

...Let's get one thing straight. It is not an insult to call a proudly public lesbian a lesbian. It's an insult to gasp when someone calls her a lesbian. That's how all the gays I have spoken to the past 24 hours perceived the press response. You're embarrassed for us. And it's infuriating. ...

Cullen closes the article saying that the worst thing about coming out to his parents was that at first, they were embarassed about what other people would think of them. He said that it took years for them to get to the point where they didn't care who knew, or what anyone else thought about it.

The Cheneys either aren't there yet, or they're using this to obscure the fact that Bush came out 0 for 3 in the debates. Either way, it's Dick and Lynne Cheney whose behavior is an embarassment. And the Log Cabin Republicans seem to agree on that point.