By Leslie Robinson
It's the time of year when we acknowledge a woman named Mary who became pregnant without the direct involvement of a man.
It's also the time of year when we acknowledge Jesus' mother.
Mary Cheney, daughter of the vice president, and her partner Heather Poe are having a baby. The news of Mary's pregnancy came from her father's spokeswoman, who announced the baby is due in late spring. Just how the openly lesbian Mary became with child the spokeswoman declined to discuss.
I smell a poll question for gay newspapers all over the country: Do you think Mary dipped into a sperm bank, or went turkey baster with some strapping Log Cabin Republican?
It's also possible she simply did the nasty with a Secret Service agent, but that's not where I'd put my money.
The spokeswoman said, "The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation to the arrival of their sixth granddaughter." I think the elder Cheneys probably mean it, even as they've tried to deny, hide and downplay Mary's lesbianism over the years.
The timing here is interesting. I wouldn't be at all surprised if grandpa Dick urged and begged Mary to get pregnant, or at least announce the pregnancy, only after the November election. Going into the election, social conservatives were already peeved with the administration. If news had hit that the veep's dyke daughter was knocked up, Karl Rove would've had an aneurysm.
Now that the news has hit, conservatives have lived down to expectations. "Just because you can conceive a child outside a one-woman, one-man marriage doesn't mean it's a good idea," said Carrie Gordon Earll, a policy analyst for Focus on the Family, to The Associated Press. "Love can't replace a mother and a father."
Janice Crouse, a senior fellow at the think tank of Concerned Women for America, said the revelation would lower the Bush administration in the eyes of conservatives. She called the pregnancy "unconscionable," which I think is unconscionable.
"It's very disappointing that a celebrity couple like this would deliberately bring into the world a child that will never have a father," she said. "They are encouraging people who don't have the advantages they have."
Apparently it's the moral obligation of this famous female couple to stomp on their maternal instincts and forego having a child. They could use their prominence to send the proper message that being gay is plenty bad enough, and shouldn't be compounded by adding a child to the unbalanced equation. After Mary and Heather's example, other gays, tragically lacking in fame and money and the ability to think for themselves, will race each other to conceive.
Alan Keyes was right! Mary Cheney is a selfish hedonist! And she won't be fit for society until she gets herself pregnant through some time-honored heterosexual method, like a one-night stand.
Mary scares people on the right like Janice Crouse because she is so otherwise correct. Mary is the picture of conservatism, working for big corporations and her father's political campaigns, never publicly challenging his positions like a Candace Gingrich or Chastity Bono. Even her desire to become a mom is conventional.
She's all about the status quo. Except for one thing – she's a homo. If this conservative paragon gets pregnant as a matter of course, does that make it the norm? If her father is happy about it, is he a loving dad or a liberal?
Mary donated to the unsuccessful effort in her own state of Virginia to thwart a same-sex marriage ban. On the face of it, a grossly liberal act. But maybe she was behaving like a mother-to-be, fiercely defending her offspring from harm. Conservative? Liberal?
It's Christmas – send a social conservative the gift of aspirin.
