Miscellaneous: January 2007 Archives

Cheney went off on CNN’s “Situation Room” host Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday’s episode, after Blitzer congratulated the Vice President on the impending birth of his grandchild, while adding that there are some conservative groups who are critical of Mary’s pregnancy.

Blitzer read him a statement from Focus on the Family, a social-conservative group that believes it’s not best for a child to be raised by single-sex parents, like Mary Cheney and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe.

“Mary Cheney’s pregnancy raises the question of what’s best for children. Just because it’s possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father, doesn’t mean it’s best for the child.” [...]

Cheney: “I’m delighted -- I’m delighted I’m about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf, and obviously think the world of both of my daughters and all of my grandchildren. And I think, frankly, you’re out of line with that question.”

Blitzer: “That was just a question that’s come up and it’s a responsible, fair question.” (source)

Why wasn’t it a fair question? Suddenly, now that the Focus on the Family (one of the Administrations’ backers) are questioning the construction or Mary Cheney’s family, her father tears Blitzer’s head off with a simple question. Usually people do that when something hits a nerve. It’s not as though Mary is being outed.

Cheney’s anger is misdirected. The people he should be shouting at is the Focus on the Family crowd, who should be focusing on their own damn families (people who throw stones at glass houses...). They are the ones who disrespected Mary’s family. Wolf Blitzer merely followed up with a question concerning the comments from Focus on the Family. But then again, if Cheney took them on, that could jeopardize contributions from Focus on the Family, and we can’t have that can we?

Which brings me to my question of Dick Cheney. He’s so damned defensive about this issue of his daughter’s family, that there is obviously something in his closet that he doesn’t want to get out. I would personally have a bigger issue with him being a lesbian (would be wrong on so many levels) than I would the war in Iraq. At least with the war in Iraq, I can understand it. He loves war because there is big money to be made (by some) in war. I get it. The anger he displays over a simple question, I don’t get. Dick Cheney is still acting like the year is 1955. Why?

He (Martin Luther King, Jr.) had been jailed in Birmingham, Alabama because of his civil rights leadership. Eight white clergy placed an ad in one of Birmingham’s newspapers questioning his right to be in their city, and suggesting strongly that he and ‘The Movement’ become more moderate in their approach.

In his letter he wrote: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

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If we who are black are unable to be in an ally/advocate relationship with our GLBT sisters and brothers of every race in their struggle, our commitment to the black justice struggle loses a bit of its integrity. The negative attitudes of black persons and other persons of color toward the rights of gay persons, suggests that we have forgotten our own struggles that continue to this day.

I cannot comprehend nor understand their theology nor their understanding of justice of many African churchmen who seem to be more ’worked up’ about a gay Episcopal bishop than they are about the legacy of colonialism that is still present in their nations and their churches, the tragedy of the deaths of millions because of HIV/AIDS, the poverty that exists all around them and in places, the appearance that black totalitarianism is valid when white totalitarianism was not.

As a clergyman, I believe Dr. King would vigorously oppose those in religion who use Scripture to justify their denial of human rights in the church and beyond of those who love someone of the same-sex. He would remind religious leaders of how historically, the Bible has been used to oppress persons, only in time to reverse their resistance.

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