Kerry's Comment

Everyone's in a tizzy about the comment Kerry made about Dick Cheney's daughter. As Msnbc notes, "Mary Cheney finds herself in eye of political storm" (kudos to Msnbc though for the excellent metaphor... Everyone around her is making a big commotion, but she herself is silent [and probably doesn't even care]. See, she's like the eye of a storm...)" Let me give my honest, dispassionate view.

It was completely unnecessary, not in the sense of uncalled for or inappropriate, although some people are charging these things. It was unnecessary to any point Kerry was visibly trying to make. Like, if he was trying to bring things down to a personal level, to make a point that way, then it would have made some sense, because Cheney's daughter is common currency in the sense that she represents a well-known example of a homosexual child living in an all-heterosexual family. Or if he was trying to praise the Cheneys for their support for their daughter and wanted to extrapolate out from that some message about how we should handle gay rights issues in this country, then it would make some sense to mention her also. He could even mention her to argue that the vice president is terrible and insensitive toward homosexuals (which doesn't seem to be the case) therefore arguing he's somehow unfit for office, and though people would disagree, it would at least be a valid invocation of another politician's personal life.

The most coherent explanation I have heard so far, because it is really a stretch to associate the remark with any specific point, goes along the lines of that Kerry was trying to put a human face on the abstract issue of sexuality in America. If he was doing that, he could have done a much better job of it, by following with something like "And so none of us is removed from this issue. Gay people are in all of our families." I don't really buy the interpretation that the entire objective was just to bring up that Cheney had a gay daughter. First of all, how many people don't already know that his daughter is gay...probably a very small number. Second, what would possibly be the politically advantageous effect of just bringing up the fact that Cheney's daughter is gay? Was he hoping to turn off the homophobic demographic to Bush's ticket? Was he trying to embarass the vice president by insinuation that he supported anti-gay policies despite his daughter. Trying to arouse emotion against Bush's proposed marriage ammendment?

Of course this is all taking the remark out of context which is that Kerry was answering the question "Do you think homosexuality is a choice?" Assuming that politicians actually do answer questions (which is a pretty bad assumption -- pub), then Kerry was somehow answering whether he thinks homosexuality is a choice. To that end, the only relevance I can see is that he was trying to support his answer of no..."Of course not, would any rational person choose to be gay in a family like that?" But that would be pretty terrible. Kerry himself is explaining it as an attempt to praise the Cheneys for the way they dealt with their daughter being a lesbian, which is pretty laughable because he didn't mention the Cheneys at all.