The Homeowner: Mary, quite contrary

By Mike Prevatt

In terms of bombshell soundbites, no Democrat has dropped as many this election year as Teresa Heinz Kerry. However, her husband John finally sacked up and lobbed a big one at the Republicans during the final presidential debate, and it's got the right wing in a huff--for no good reason.

As you probably heard, when John Kerry and George W. Bush were asked if homosexuality was a choice, Kerry responded by saying, "We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as."

Boy, did that do the trick. As soon as the debate ended, pundits from both sides were weighing in on Marygate, with the right getting the most blustery. How dare Kerry drag the vice president's daughter into the political arena! How inappropriate to bring her name up! With all the gasping rhetoric from the GOP side, you'd think Kerry had outed her.

He didn't. Mary Cheney's sexuality has been public knowledge since the '90s. She first gained prominence as a flack for Coors, helping make the company more gay-friendly. She worked on her father's 2000 campaign, and afterward she was part of the Republican Unity Coalition. She quit the coalition this year, and is now one of her father's closest election advisers.

As soon as the conservatives started getting all pissy about the Mary comment--partly to cover up public opinion polls that indicated Kerry had won the debate--gay bloggers and pundits presented a unanimous rebuttal to the outcry. They argued that Kerry's comment couldn't have been negative unless you view homosexuality as bad. All he said was that she was a lesbian, and assumed that Mary had known that all her life. He didn't speak of it as an affliction or handicap, which is exactly how conservatives treated it.

This includes her own mother, Lynne, who went off the next day about the "cheap and tawdry" remark, opining that Kerry was "not a good man." This, from the same person who, when asked by Cokie Roberts in 2000 about her daughter being openly gay, bitterly affirmed that Mary had never declared herself a lesbian--an outright lie. Lynne would give you the idea she's protecting her daughter when in fact she's merely trying to guard her own image and play politics. How do you explain her silence after Illinois Republican Senate nominee Alan Keyes called Mary a "selfish hedonist" while talking about gay marriage last month? Where was Lynne's public outrage on that matter?

Then there's the vice president. He, too, decried Kerry's comment, which came a week after his debate with John Edwards. When a gay-themed question was posed, Edwards began by praising Cheney and his family in their acceptance of their gay daughter. Whether it was genuine or not, Cheney thanked him, and did not speak of it later. A few months earlier, he fielded a question on same-sex marriage by prefacing that he had a gay daughter. So what's he getting all bristly about?

One could assume that Cheney himself is a private, behind-the-scenes sort of dude, and that he would find this very public discussion about a member of his family particularly egregious. Or, perhaps it has something to do with the Republican Party's reluctance to acknowledge anything homosexual. After all, it has been determined that the president has only used the word "gay" once since the Supreme Court ushered him into the White House.

And still, Republicans are essentially making Mary the new gay marriage, a wedge issue to divide the populace. They argue that sexuality is no one's business, and yet they make no bones about throwing Mary's name around just to make the Democrats look bad. If homosexuality is a topic best kept quiet, why do the Republicans keep bringing it up? On one hand, they seem to be appealing to moderates by appearing to "protect" Mary. On the other, they're clearly stirring its evangelical voter base up enough to ensure their presence at the polls. It smacks of a Karl Rove tactic.

In a way, it's kind of sad. Mary Cheney does not speak to the press, and doggedly tries to avoid the spotlight. She did not ask to be an activist, and now she's a political football. However, she is the one who decided to campaign for her father and serve as his adviser. She's a willing political participant, and in this political climate, all bets are off.

Furthermore, it's hard to feel bad for Mary because of the platform she implicitly supports. Both she and her father have sat by while their party attempted to codify homophobia into the Constitution, in the form of an amendment banning gay marriage (which, thankfully, failed last month). With the rampant bigotry defining the social platform of the GOP, Mary has never justified her allegiance to this group. Is her love for her father greater than her own self-respect, or the dignity of her own people?

The irony here is that, should big-mouth John Kerry be elected president, Mary Cheney might regain the private life she so desperately wants. Then, everyone wins.

The Homeowner appears biweekly. Send your comments and nude pics (especially if you look like Jake Shears) to oughtabeinporn@yahoo.com.