Sullivan Nails It Again

From his second post on the subject of Mary Cheney's name being brought up:

In many speeches on marriage rights, I cite Mary Cheney. Why? Because it exposes the rank hypocrisy of people like president Bush and Dick and Lynne Cheney who don't believe gays are anti-family demons but want to win the votes of people who do. I'm not outing any gay person. I'm outing the double standards of straight ones. They've had it every which way for decades, when gay people were invisible. Now they have to choose.

Let me give you an example of the double standards here. I remember once being driven around by a charming woman on a stop on a book tour. We talked about my book, and she averred, after chatting all day, that she had nothing against gay people, she just wished they wouldn't "bring it up" all the time. I responded: "But you've been talking about your heterosexuality ever since I got in the car." She said: "I haven't. I've never once discussed sex." My response: "Within two minutes, you mentioned your children and your husband. You talked about your son's work at high school. You mentioned your husband's line of work. And on and on. You wear your heterosexuality on your sleeve all the time. And that's fine. But if I so much as mention the fact that I'm gay, I'm told it's all I care about, and that I should pipe down. Don't you see the double standard?" Candidates mention their families all the time. An entire question last night was devoted to the relationship between men and their wives and daughters. Mentioning Mary Cheney is no more and no less offensive than that. What is offensive is denying gay couples equal rights in the constitution itself. Why don't conservatives get exercized about that?

And where were all these conservatives rushing to Mary Cheney's defense when Alan Keyes was calling her a selfish hedonist? They were dead silent. Where were all of her defenders when their fellow conservatives on the floor of the Congress proclaiming that if you allow gays to get married, our very civilization would fall? Well, they were saying the very same thing. Where were her defenders when Bush was fighting to keep the authority of the police in Texas to arrest gays for having sex in the privacy of their own home? Oh yeah, they were working with him to do the same thing. Where were they when the uber-idiot Jerry Falwell was listing gays and lesbians as part of the cause of 9/11, or when Pat Robertson was agreeing with him on national television? Not a word was heard about it.

All of those things are enormously destructive to the life and liberty of Mary Cheney and every other gay person in this country and we didn't hear one word from those who are so bravely leaping to defend her against....what? There's nothing to defend her against, the man didn't insult her in any way! This is pure political hypocrisy on display and that's all it is. And let's not forget that Mary Cheney is not an apolitical teenage girl having the spotlight shined on her against her will. She runs Cheney's vice-presidential campaign and has long been a political operative. She chooses to be in the political spotlight and she has been out of the closet and appearing in public with her partner for years.

If it makes the Cheneys uncomfortable to hear their daughter's name juxtaposed with the President's claim that allowing her to marry her partner will "destroy the moral fabric of America", my response is that it SHOULD make them uncomfortable, but it should do so not because it's impolite to bring it up, but because they have been complicit in allowing anti-gay bigotry to drive the political strategy of their party. They should have the courage to stand up for what is right but they don't. Short term political considerations are more important to them. Well I say that if you make that choice, you don't have the right to complain when the dissonance between your political position and your personal one are pointed out.

If she were being outed, I would agree with those who are upset about it. If she was not a political operative herself and was just an accountant or something else where she never asked to be in the political spotlight, I would agree with those who are upset about it. If he had said anything that was at all insulting about her, I'd be the first one to hammer him over it. But none of those things are the case here. What is the case is that the same people who are complicit in advocating policies that punish her for who she is, and who have engaged in the most vile anti-gay rhetoric and activity, are now crying foul for having their hypocrisy pushed to the center of the stage. To those people I say "tough". And to those who are for gay rights who take the position that the mention of her name was crass and unnecessary, I say that might be the case (I don't think it is, but that's an understandable position at least), but that you should aim your anger at those who push an anti-gay agenda that turns Mary Cheney into a second-class citizen and not at those who merely pointed out that she, along with millions of others, are victimized by that agenda.