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Being Honest About Gay Marriage

CNN has an article today on their website about President Bush’s reaction to the pregnancy of Mary Cheney, the Vice President’s daughter. As you may know, Mary Cheney is gay, and she and her partner are expecting their first child. Here is what the president had to say:

“I think Mary is going to be a loving soul to her child. And I’m happy for her,” Bush said in an interview with People magazine.

President Bush was asked how this fit in with his well known political opposition to gay marriage and to the idea of a monogamous gay couple raising a child:

In a 2005 interview with The New York Times, Bush said: “I believe children can receive love from gay couples. But the ideal is — and studies have shown that –the ideal is where a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman.”

He sidestepped the issue when questioned by People magazine about whether he still held that belief.

“Mary Cheney is going to make a fine mom, and she’s going to love this child a lot,” he said, according to an excerpt from the interview.

And here we reach a conundrum for the president. If the president really thinks gay couples raising children are a threat to the American family, that most fundamental of societal units that is holding the very fabric of our nation together, shouldn’t the president speak up? He could say something like, “I think the decisions Mary Cheney and her partner have made threaten the American family and should be guarded against at all cost.” But he doesn’t say that. He says “Mary Cheney is going to make a fine mom, and she’s going to love this child a lot.”

The president has thus made two statements: (1) he thinks gay couples pose a unique risk to the children they choose to raise, and (2) Mary Cheney is going to make a fine mom and will love her child. How do those jive? Let’s give the president the benefit of the doubt and say he believes both statements are true. The question to the president should then be, “What makes Mary Cheney unique among gay parents that will allow her to ‘make a fine mom’?” I sure would like to know why Mary Cheney is the exception to the rule and why we should expect gay parents at large to be a threat to the well-being of children they choose to raise.

And, since he acknowledges that empirically some gay couples are able to make fine parents and love their children, why should we legislate against a whole class of potential parents in the form of attacks on gay marriage? There are plenty of straight couples that make really crappy parents. Should we just ban marriage altogether?

Now let’s say the president believes statement (1) but does not believe statement (2). Then he’s just being patronizing. He’s saying what he thinks he should be saying, what a decent human being would say about the daughter of a close personal friend. That’s plainly disrespectful and insulting.

Okay, let’s say the president does not believe (1). What he thinks about (2) doesn’t really matter at this point. Then it’s clear he’s just been pandering to his political base, trying to degrade the humanity of gay couples purely for political gain. How entirely selfish, intellectually dishonest, and morally reprehensible that would be.

So, the best case scenario here is that the president really does believe his two statements, and at that point, I wish journalists would take the added step of asking the president to identify why Mary Cheney will make a great mom when so many other homosexuals would pose a risk to their children. Then the journalist should point out that within the class of gay parents, the president himself has acknowledged there are good parents and bad parents. Within the class of straight parents, it is well know there are good parents and bad parents. Why should we uniquely legislate against the ability of homosexuals to be parents while we do not do the same to heterosexuals?

It’s pure, unadulterated bigotry. You can tie a colorful ribbon around it and put a pretty bow on top, but it is what it is. And the sooner people recognize what it is, the sooner we can stop wasting our time on this nonsense and try to fix real problems, of which this country currently has many.