Vice President Cheney's Gay Daughter Mary is Pregnant

by CARIOFTHEVALLEY
Across the street from the Market East train station in Philadelphia is a Loew's Hotel with one of those scrolling news displays on the corner of the building (à la New York City but poorly executed and out of context). As I walked to work this morning I saw the above headline scrolling by and had to laugh out loud. Not that it's funny that she's pregnant - assuming she wanted to be then it's great. The headline itself struck me as funny. How do you convey the import of such a happening in 7 words or fewer? President Cheney's Gay Daughter Mary is Pregnant. I question needing her name in the bit. Does her name contribute meaning? Does he have more than one gay daughter? Why should we care? Well, no doubt Dick cares. According to today's New York Times:

Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney, said the vice president and his wife, Lynne Cheney, were “looking forward with eager anticipation” to the baby’s birth, which is expected this spring and will bring to six the number of grandchildren the Cheneys have.

Mr. Cheney’s office would not provide details about how Mary Cheney became pregnant or by whom, and Ms. Cheney did not respond to messages left at her office and with her book publisher, Simon & Schuster.

Nice spin, Dick.

A very nicely written take on this news and how it could make a positive difference in gay rights comes from Thomas de Zengotita writing for the Huffington Post:

That's why this little event in the second family matters. Dick and Lynn love their daughter. She's an actual real person to them. They will stand by her, as they should, and the hell with ideology.

But what Dick and Lynn don't get is that all human beings in the world are connected to the particular people they love in the same way. What the politics they represent ignores is the meaning of that particular, yet universal, love. That ignorance allows them to countenance the slaughter of innocents in the name of abstractions.

Of course the debate about gay marriage, fueled by this serendipitous news, will be top news today and I think it will be interesting to see how the Bush administration distances itself from the VP's own daughter as it asserts that "alternative" relationships should not be recognized or bring forth offspring. Let the headlines fly.