A Child Born of Vice
| Wed Dec. 6, 2006 12:42 PM PST
Mary Cheney, the vice president's 37-year-old lesbian daughter, is pregnant. In Virginia. Last month, Virginia passed an absurdly stringent amendment [PDF] barring domestic partnership benefits—ostensibly for same-sex couples, but the amendment was worded so vigorously that many expect it will affect straight couples as well.
Virginia Republicans strongly supported the measure. Although the younger Cheney called it "a gross affront to gays and lesbians everywhere," in the past she has campaigned for her father, Darth Vader of the Republican Storm Trooper army.
So where does the amendment leave Heather Poe, Mary's partner of 15 years? Nowhere, it seems. Virginia's notoriously conservative courts are leading the charge to deny same-sex partners any rights to the children they help raise. Jennifer Chrisler of Family Pride, the largest gay-lesbian family advocacy group in the country, said that unless the couple moves to a "less restrictive" state, "Heather will never be able to have a legal relationship with her child."
If the couple were to split up, Heather would be especially screwed because her credentials can't compete with Mary's. Cheney has a high-powered corporate job at AOL. Heather is a "former park ranger," who is now renovating the couple's Great Falls, Virginia, home. If history is any guide, the V.P. wouldn't hesitate to use his friendships with judges to get what he wants. Cheney appears to be supportive of Mary and Heather's relationship, but he has, according to Chrisler, "been complicit in the largest full-scale attack on the LGBT community in modern history." It seems safe to say he'd want Mary to have full custody.
For now, the Washington Post reports that the vice president is "looking forward with eager anticipation" to Mary's baby's birth. But can you imagine Dick "Dick" Cheney smiling?
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Comments
So sad; there is so little happiness in this world that denying it to two people who want to be together is tragic. I am quite heterosexual, so no desire to emulate their sort of union, but quite happy for two to share their lives in peace; and the child would benefit from having two people looking after it. A same-sex union has enough problems without Mrs. Grundy adding more sorrows.
As a Virginia resident who opposed the amendment who worked the polls on election day it both pained and chagrined me that Virginians let bigotry rule the day. There is not much that makes me ashamed of being an American, but I went home bleeding that day, at the short-sighted rush to take human rights away from a particular group. I wonder where those self-satisifed bigots will be when this amendment starts causing problems for heterosexual people. Will they repeal it the first time a woman dies because she's not married to her abuser and couldn't get a restraining order?
So on and so on.
Another opportunity for the pot to call the kettle black? A wonderfully written article but the best the Democrats have to offer in this bonfire of political vanities is the tarnished star of an African-American "civil rights lawyer" (so called) who's only rationale for denying gays the fundamental civil right of marriage are his religious beliefs. When the volk bow down to a media created "superstar" who would use the illicit means of violating the First Amendment to achieve the illicit end of denying civil rights guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment then Winston Churchill was right when he stated that "the best argument against democracy is a ten minute conversation with the average voter." There is a pox on both our houses and even the best of the Democrats are 'separate but [not] equal' Dixiecrats who represent the ghost of Jim Crow. Just Google it or see See "Untangling Barack Obama's audacious mumbo jumbo," by John P. Mortimer, at http://ebar.com/common/inc/article_print.php?sec=guest_op&article=73 . Also see http://www.outrightusa.org/ And see
http://outrightlibertarians.blogspot.com/2006/11/obama-doesnt-get-civil-l iberty.html.
Even the UK is onto this deception but the "liberal press" in the US uses silence as an exercise in collaboration to pull the wool over people's eyes.
See http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk/latest.htm for December 3, 2006. Wake up.
