There's Something About Mary Cheney

The recent news that the Vice President's daughter Mary Cheney is going to have a baby has been criticized by many conservatives because she is unmarried and, according to John Kerry, a lesbian. But at The Corner they seem to have taken a vow of silence about the issue. Kathryn Jean Lopez, who has been quite vocal about her opposition to gay people having children or getting married or just generally annoying her with their ickiness, refuses to join the chorus of conservative voices attacking Cheney. "Unless Mary Cheney asks to be part of a political debate about this, there is no need to have a public discussion about her life," she writes.

Lopez is right that we should ask people first if we want to turn their lives into political issues. Terry Schiavo's life, for example, would never have become a political issue if Schiavo hadn't given her consent by blinking in Morse code when she was asked. But gay rights activists never asked permission to politicize Mary Ceney's pregnancy and make her baby a poster child for their cause. Liberals are always exploiting people in order to try to put "faces" to issues, which just makes it all the more difficult to have a reasonable and objective discussion. All of the rational arguments against gay marriage become distorted when you try to consider the impact on specific, real people. I'm not saying, for example, that we should not have pictures of particularly unattractive men kissing on anti-gay marriage posters, only that we don't need to know who they are or hear about their life stories. It's much easier to have a sensible discussion about how letting homosexuals marry will lead to people marrying their grandmothers or household pets if we talk about them only in the abstract.

But while I would prefer not to discuss Mary Cheney's private life, I do have some words of advice for her father. There was a time when unwed motherhood called for only one solution. Back in the day it was known as a "shotgun marriage." We all know the Vice President has a shotgun and he knows how to use it. I think the Vice President should get out his shotgun and (after making sure the safety is on) hunt down the father of this baby as soon as possible. Then he should make the father do the right thing by Mary and marry her right away. It doesn't matter what kind of a man the father is, a baby needs both a mother and a father, which is why it is also so crucial that we save Britney's marriage. In fact, if he can't find the real father, anyone will do. There are plenty of eligible bachelors who would love to be Dick Cheney's son-in-law. I believe Harold Ford is single and Kid Rock soon will be. Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, unfortunately, are already taken. Someone might want to break that news to Ms. Lopez.

According to Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, who called Cheney's pregnancy "unconscionable," Cheney "sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation." By taking action, Mary Cheney's father could show just how important it is for a daughter to have a father in her life.

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